Flowers, Onam and Kamala Das

This is a rejoinder to the post by Dr Rufus on flowers which was posted in RR on Saturday. The day that was posted was a special day for Keralites. It was Atham. Exactly after 10 days, the harvest festival of Onam is celebrated. One of the highlights of Onam is the Pookkalam or the Flower Carpets. Groups of children carrying flower baskets to collect flowers from the neighbourhood is a common sight during these ten days. (Onam is a memory for the expatriate and that memory is commodified beyond imagination) Today, the sight of children with flower baskets is a rarity because flowers are brought from the neighbouring states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Places in Karnataka like Nelamangala as well as some parts of Tumakuru, Kolar and Chikkaballapur districts are famous for their flower farming. In Tamil Nadu, the places where flowers are grown are Thovalai, Dindigul, Madurai, and Salem. This year, due to the pandemic the Kerala government has urged the public not to visit the markets to purchase flowers. The public is encouraged to get flowers that are found or grown in the neighbourhood. So, this year, everyone is getting a chance to explore their front yard and the backyard. (Reminds me of the poem Journey to the Interior) There is also an interesting connection between collecting flowers and Kamala Das aka Madhavikutty aka Kamala Surayya. During one Onam season, she travelled the length and breadth of Kerala to see the flowers. She even ventured into the forest of Kerala to see the flowers. After returning from the trip, she told that of all the flowers that she saw, the beauty of the wildflowers attracted her the most. They are hidden and bloomed in some unknown corners of the forest. Nobody came to pluck these flowers and they were not used in the Pookkalam. References to flowers are quite common in the stories of Kamala Das. One reference is to the blooming Neermathalam, called the Caper tree in English. Interestingly a group of women planted a Neermathalam tree in Trivandrum and fondly named it Madhavikutty. The space near the tree is used for literary meetings, a corner for them to sit, read, chat, make phone calls, or not do anything at all. They even planted a Mangosteen tree in the near vicinity in remembrance of Vaikom Mohammed Basheer who sat under the tree to converse with the public. Kamal Das is also a good reference for the themes of eroticism and feminism.