#m!ik delkila

[miano-oscarwilde]

1. Floral carpet (Athapoov) and the legendary leaf

Legendary leaf is important to me

During the celebration of Onam, we lay a floral carpet in our courtyard, or in modern times inside our house, in the veranda. It is a pattern of rings made on the floor using flowers and leaves. It is done starting with laying a small ring of flowers on the first day (atham). The flower used for the first ring is "thumba". The myth behind thumba is that it was rejected and teased by other flowers and labelled unworthy of shivapuja (ritual of worshipping lord Shiva) because it's very small and unattractive (i think it's cute). The sad thumba prayed to lord Shiva and gained his acceptance. So the first ring of the atham is laid with this flower. Here comes one of the best similarities. The rarest ingredient is this thumba, just like the legendary flower in mairuma. Just like thumba, this flower was also called unattractive in mairuma before it exploded to create the most beautiful flower. Our athapoov works similarly.

This is what an athapoov looks like.

The second picture is one I laid at my house. We don't have much flowers in our garden though it's quite a forest rather than a garden. Unfortunately, we don't have thumba either. Our star ingredient for onam. The best part is,Just like we lay the floral carpet, the legendary flower exploded and gave everyone a visual treat of the most beautiful flower they have never seen before, just like our athapoov. If you look at this, it is very similar to the Athapoov, with rings. On the tenth day,. I have decided to use this design for our athapoov. So this is the Athapoov in mairuma

And interestingly, Delkira himself appears when the legendary flower blooms, as if he chose the flower important to him, like Lord Shiva

Lord Shiva looks similar to Delkira

[miano-oscarwilde]

3. We had a Asura (anti-god) king like Derkila! How Onam is Connected to the Netherworld and demons

We celebrate Onam for our demon king Mahabali

It all started when the Gods envied the righteous Asura king Mahabali who once ruled over our land like no other, making sure every one of his subjects were treated equally. No evil existed during his reign. He took over Earth, heaven and hell. In our Hindu mythology, the Gods and demons were constantly at war with each other and sometimes the Asuras have won. Mahabali was a good demon like Derkila. The people worshipped Mahabali who later ascended the throne, instead of worshipping the Gods. This caused instability in the two realms- heaven and earth. So lord Indra sent an avatar of Lord Vishnu to level things. This avatar's called vamana. Vamana means dwarf. He asks the generous king for three feats of land which the king grants and the vamana grew in size and became a giant. With each step he conquered heaven, Earth and Hell. The third time, he stepped on top of the king's head and banished him to pathala (Netherworld). Thus the three worlds were restored to gods and in return he was given a boon to visit his people every year during the Harvest festival.

Following this legend, every Onam people dress up as Mahabali and fellow demons and visit people's households accompanied by drummers and people dressed as tigers. Mahabali and his team is present wherever there's a public Onam celebration. It reminds me of crowning the young kings who are considered equal to Derkila who once ruled over the Netherworld in peace and prosperity. Mahabali is doing well there...i guess. Now it's time for him to go back to hell.

The accompanying demons include kariyila maadan, kummattikali etc. Kids usually dress up as maadan and grown ups as kummatti. They're dancing demons.