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Onam
The harvest festival of Kerala: women wear the cream and gold kasavu saree or set-mundu, and a flower carpet is laid at the door.
What is worn for Onam
Onam is the harvest festival of Kerala, kept in the month of Chingam, in August or September, to welcome the legendary king Mahabali. The main day, Thiruvonam, is the one on which the star Thiruvonam rules, and the festival runs for ten days. A pookalam, a carpet of flowers, is laid at the door each morning, and a feast of many vegetarian dishes, the sadya, is served on a banana leaf. The dress is the cream cotton of Kerala with a gold border: women wear the kasavu saree, or the two-piece set-mundu, and men wear a kasavu mundu. Elders give new clothes to the young, called onakodi.
The sarees
Also part of it, and being written: Balaramapuram (Handloom cotton of Balaramapuram near Thiruvananthapuram, a centre for Onam clothes.).
Written by the EveryPallu desk with AI assistance. Background: "Onam" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Mundum neriyathum: L. Anantha Krishna Iyer (Diwan Bahadur), Public domain, source