As the festival season knocks at my door step, I can’t help but reminiscence of the festivities past – of the familiarity of faces that surrounded us, of the nostalgic memories attached to each ritual…
Vishu of childhood memories flood
through my mind tonight…the feverish excitement that achan used to bring to the
Vishu-previous-night preparations..his meticulous ‘kani’ organization would start from dusk to
the late hours of night…arranging, re-arranging of the various visually
soothing items for the kani…a few precious shavings of konna poo that used to
be shipped to Oman from India, a bit of rice, fresh vegetables, the coconut and
the white kasavu mundu..a stickler for geometry and tidiness, he would move
items around till the final output was to his satisfaction…And it was time to
finally sleep and await the early hours of Vishu to break into the house…
I would lay awaiting the small
shrug in the wee hours from achan amma as they led me to the ‘kani’ place…trying
hard not to peek through my eyes as I was directed to the ‘right’ spot where the
kani is seen to its best and greatest..and then of course the whole purpose of
the festival – the vishu kaineetum…rounding off all the moneys received into my
saving kitty for a precious purchase…Vishu was always about the diversity and
modifications that the kani would undergo every year..and of course filling up
my tiny pockets for some valued thing that I would eye ahead of Vishu…
As the years progressed, as you
started counting and earning your own moneys, the kaineetum faded into a ritual..and
the excitement of the kani and its artistic angles slowly diminished into a
routine…but achan never grew out of his childish excitement for the kani…still
pottering around to find the right bowl to fit the green gram and hunting for a
little bit of konna flowers…house always abuzz with his childish festive vibes..and
with him we lost that magic of the Vishu night..of the energy to put together
the best kani..a festival slowly dissolving into a puddle of memories past…
It is almost as if age and
departure of our loved ones chips off each festival and its thousand rituals
and moods….the Vishus we celebrated with that tiny packet of konna poo (withered
and wilted by the time it reaches our homes) was so much a magnum opus and
today when the konna flowers are in abundance in my backyard, the loss of faces
and people seem to belittle the festival into a small ‘tick-in-the-box’ that
one must adhere to come April 14 every year..It isn’t the konna, the kaineetum
silly – it is the soothing warmth of having our loved ones around us that
maketh a Vishu!!
