I am not a very religious person. The only incentive for celebrating any religious - or to some extent cultural - festival for me is the food. Festivals are a great way to exercise one's taste buds. I must confess that every time any festival is around the corner, the part of my tongue containing the taste buds start tickling. Time and again, I begin to smell the non-existent aroma of the food that may be prepared on that particular festival. Of course, my culinary skills being limited, I cannot actively participate in the preparations of these fantastic dishes; though I do my best to help out - sometimes by staying out of the way and not trying to sneak in and get something to eat.
So far festivals for me have meant Diwali, Holi, Gudi Padwa, Ganesh Chaturthi, Christmas, and a few other local ones. And this in turn has meant gorging on chakli, shankar pali, karanji, puran poli, shrikhand, basundi, ukadiche modak (hell any modak), the christmas flower (I dunno the actual name for this one...but have just invented one myself), the easter eggs, and god knows how many other mouth watering items that are making me salivate as I write this. But that was when I was in Maharashtra. Being in Karnataka - or South India if you wish - brings with it new festivals and new delicacies. I missed out on Pongal a few months back due to my own stupidity, but was given a chance to atone for it when Onam came around.
Onam is predominantly a Keralan festival and is very sparsely celebrated in Karnataka. The most predominant image associated with Onam is that of the snake boat races. I guess I am not the right person to speak about Onam, given my range of knowledge and experience. So I will let Wiki to do the talking for me.
Now I have been in Bengaluru for nearly an year, and yet I am to see any festival being celebrated with the kind of gusto and excitement that I have seen in Mumbai. But then I guess in a way it's not that bad to have your ear drums hale and hearty at the end of Diwali. So Onam, being a Kerala festival, was a pretty quite affair with the only visible sign being the various sales being advertised outside all the shops. Of course, we had to drag ourselves to that small confinement designed to keep the modern man in a prison whilst giving him the illusion that he is doing some very important work: an office cubicle. Of course, once I reached there, I realized that most people had decided not to be enslaved that day and had taken the day off (it was a Monday, and the next day was an holiday). An account of the rest of the day would do nothing but waste my time and yours and lead to nothing. Anyway, the only thing that managed to keep managed to uphold my sagging spirit (Monday + A near empty office = it can't get any depressing) was an invitation by a friend of mine for Onam dinner.
Well I haven't had any Onam food before, yet my stomach started aching for it more than an hour before the scheduled appointment. Tasting new food is like moving to a new locality, you are apprehensive whether it will blow you away with it's amazing flavors or it will blow your appetite away because it has something that your stomach cannot digest, but you are also excited because you are venturing into a new territory that offers more new vistas to explore. But when you are tasting home-made food, the apprehensions are normally blown away into thin air; it's just the anticipation that lasts.
That was truly the mood as I went to my friend's place. And saying that the dinner was one of the best I have had ever since coming to Bangalore would be an understatement. Apart from the traditional rice, papad, and pickles, there was the Aviyal, a Kerala delicacy. Complimenting the Aviyal was the Olan, a delicacy prepared from pumpkin, moong, and coconut milk. Adding more flavor to this already mouthwatering fare were the cluster beans and the cabbage vegetables. The cabbage preparation was done in a rather interesting manner. Instead of just peeling the cabbage, it had been grind into a paste and then prepared the traditional way. All this was complemented by the Pachadi, the South Indian version of raita. As if this was not enough, our hosts had more plans to send my mind in a tizzy. Following the main course was the Payasam. To the uninitiated, payasam is a form of kheer. Now as most of you will be aware, there are a lot of varieties of kheer. The one that we got to savor was made from rice, mixed with milk and jaggery. The use of banana leaves as plates added to the novelty of the experience. All in all, it was a fantastic experience and one that, even if it does nothing else, still sets me drooling whenever I think of it.
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