Namitha revisits her Onam memories

I have beautiful memories of Onam from my childhood days. We used to eagerly wait for vacations so that we could go to Kumarakom, our ancestral village, and collect onakkodi. Among our cousins, we used to have a competition as to who can get the maximum number of new clothes. During one of the vacations, some of my dad's friends and their families came down and we had lots of fun playing games like Sundarikku pottuthodal and Uriyadi.For pookkalam, we never bought flowers but picked them from the neighbourhood, singing, Poove poli ..poove.... The flowers we collected were the native varieties like thumpapoo, kongini poo and whatever we could find in the fields and by the roads. The real fun was creating designs and arranging the flowers.
For this Onam, I will be on the location of my Telugu movie. Though people here know that it is our festival, I don't think there will be any celebrations. A festival becomes one when we are with family, at the right place. Right now in Hyderabad, I am with my dad and two assistants. None of us have any culinary skills to speak of, so we might visit a Kerala restaurant to have sadya.