Hyderabad: Living up to its cosmopolitan tag, Hyderabad as a city provides a unique oneness to people of any state who are based here either for their livelihood or studies.
One year down the line, most of them who come to stay here lose their initial days of homesickness. This applies to all those coming all the way from Kerala. In fact many Keralites have made Hyderabad their home for generations together.
Onam presents the best occasion where one gets to see Keralites in their traditional attire while they celebrate the festival as they would do back in their native place-women clad in the traditional white sari and the men in white Mundu, including the hosts and guests.
Thursday’s Onam celebrations were made livelier with the artistic flower arrangements and the native culinary spread with spells of rain completing the ‘God’s own country’ feeling for thousands of Malayalee families living in the city.
The Kerala community in Mettuguda celebrated their biggest festival at the Ayyappa Swamy temple. Over five hundred Keralites took the celebration to a new high with the whole place bearing a mini-Kerala look with songs adding to the tempo, said Kunnath Sunil Kumar, treasurer of the local association. “Pookalam (flower decoration) is the highlight of the day. After the programmes were over, we went home to have ‘Onasadhya’,” he said.
Philip Joshua and his family, who were born here, said “my parents migrated some decades ago. Every year we celebrate the festival on a grand note. The family gathering and our traditions reinvigorate us,” he said
Around four hundred nurses from Kerala celebrated Onam in Jubilee Hills Apollo hospital campus. Special delicacies from their state were offered to guests while there was good applause for the cultural events, according to Bala Krishan, who resides in the campus.
Ansha Shaji, a student, who was celebrating the festival for the first time here, said “The celebrations were wonderful. I was homesick before the festival. Today, interacting with the charming people made it look like I was celebrating Onam in my native place.”
