If you’ve only heard about the stunning backwaters, the swaying coconut palms, and the soothing greenery of ‘God’s Own Country’, Kerala, you’ve missed out on a lot more! What, you ask? Is it house-boating? Ayurvedic spa treatments? Homemade tapioca with fish curry? Well, those too, but what I was really going for was the famous ‘Pongala’ festival.
About Pongala
The Pongala festival associated with the Attukal temple which takes place annually in Kerala’s capital city, Thiruvananthapuram, draws about 2.5 million to the city – a record in itself, duly noted by the Guinness Book! This is comparable to the gathering at Haridwar during the famous ‘Kumbh Mela’, with the exception that most of the people who attend the Pongala festival are women.
Its significance
Pongala denotes an offering made to the (female) deity of a temple. Women prepare this offering in the form of sweet dishes to appease the deity and to invoke the blessings of the goddess on their families. Pongala denotes an offering to the goddess of any temple really but in recent times, it’s become synonymous with the temple in ‘Attukal’. The residing deity there is the goddess Parvathy or Shakti in her incarnation as the virtuous heroine of the ancient Tamil poet, Ilango’s ‘Silappathikaaram’ (‘epic of the anklet’).
Silappathikaaram
This classic epic tells the story of ‘Kannagi’ whose husband, ‘Kovilan’ is wrongly put to death at the king’s orders after being accused of having stolen the queen’s anklets. An enraged Kannagi, grieved at the injustice done to her husband, sets fire to the whole city of Madurai in an act of revenge. Grandmothers like to recount the story that after setting Madurai aflame, Kannagi regained her calm at Attukal, where the famous temple is now located.
Festival preparations
On the days preceding the Pongala, the city of Thiruvananthapuram wears a festive look, with bright lights and blaring music at every turn. On Pongala day, the entire city becomes crowded with devotees offering Pongala on hearths made of bricks and all roads lead to Attukal! The devotees cook the Pongala dish of ‘payasam’- rice with jaggery and coconut, after praying to the goddess.
The Pongala is consecrated when the priest of the Attukal temple sprinkles holy water on each and every pot of Pongala. The women return home with contentment in their hearts, a prayer on their lips and of course, the pots of Pongala payasam which is eagerly awaited by those at home.
Nowadays, thanks to a lot of publicity, the Pongala festival at Attukal has become a national event. There are women flying in from European countries every year just to be a part of the Pongala festival and to experience the sense of harmony that prevails among the millions of worshippers. To keep up with this, the sprinkling of holy water is now done by the priests from a couple of helicopters hovering in the sky above the city!
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