Onam is the major festival in Kerala, a small south indian state often mentioned as ‘God’s Own Country’. I ‘am not going to key in anything regarding Onam, may be you can google for it. This is about few things that i observed about Malayalees outside Kerala. They celebrate Onam with great fervour than people back home. Well, they do have ‘Puli kali’ (or ‘Tiger Dance’ as mentioned by my japanese colleague) back home, but more often the kids these days are glued to the TV programs and the ‘BLOCKBUSTER MOVIES’. (Needless to say, all(hit/flop) movies are BLOCKBUSTER Movies when telecasted)

While at Hyderabad, i had been for the Onam Celebrations organized by ‘Mythri’, a hyd based malayali association. Here in Tokyo, for the last 2 years i celebrated onam with my friends and also with ‘Nihon Kairali’, a malayali association. Though away from their state, they manage to get all the things and celebrate in a grand style. I remember, at hyderabad they have even transported ‘irttukuthi vallom’( a small boat used for boat race in Kerala) and arranged a small boat race in Hussain Sagar Lake. The last few days, i could see a truck load of photos of my NRI friends having their ’sadya’ (a grand luncheon) in Orkut,a socio networking site. Many of them have travelled to distant places to join the celebrations. I did even travel around Tokyo wearing ‘Mundu’(traditional kerala dress).

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