Posted on October 22, 2008 - by rdilipk1

An Onam in Kerala

It was 12th of September 2008. A day I can never forget. I was born a Keralite but had always lived in North India since birth. My upbringing was in various parts of North India and it is not uncommon for people from a state migrating to a different state in search of jobs, to forget their hometown and the culture that their basic caste followed and practiced. It was not different with me either, and I knew my culture only to the extent it was practiced in my house. Though my parents ensured that they inculcate all of these into me, we often found that we had to compromise on lot of things because something that was practiced in our culture was done differently in the culture that I was living in. But no regrets, because I feel that is where diversity comes in and diversity is what we Indians are know for.

One such thing was celebrating Onam. We used to celebrate this biggeest festival of the Keralites in North India as well but I got to understand the difference only when I came down south to Kerala on 11th of Sept 2008 to celebrate Onam for the first time in my life spanning 32 years. So there I realized the fact that this is also necessary in order to maintain the purity of the term, “”Diversity”” because if I did not know what the original was, I would never be able to savor the taste of the cocktail.

Each and every moment spent in the 2 days that we celebrated the festival, was carved into my heart and though my cousin brothers living in Kerala were of the opinion that the celebrations had died down as years have passed and that these days people do not have time to celebrate these festivals, I found the existing way of celebrating Onam much joyous that the way we had always celebrated. Having said that I did not fail to think as to what would have been the situation about 10 years ago. Suddenly I felt the pain of loss. A loss of something that I had always owned but never realized the value of. But then probably life is always about lost dreams or, so I think.