Indian meal with over sixty dishes
COMPRISING serene stretches of canals, lagoons and lakes, the scenic backwaters of Kerala make up one of India’s most popular tourist destinations. In the waters’ southcentral region, the Pamba River spills out into Vembanad Lake, India’s longest lake, after meandering through lush tropical wilderness. While the river has many temples dotted along its banks, one particular temple, located in the small town of Aranmula, holds a special significance.
Feast of many feasts
One of the Divya Desams — the 108 temples of Vishnu revered by the 12 Alwars (poet saints) — Aranmula Parthasarathy Temple hosts an annual Hindu festival called the Aranmula Valla Sadhya, which usually starts in July at the end of monsoon season.
The two-month-long event is really a series of daily feasts called sadhyas that are conducted as offerings by devotees of Lord Krishna, the temple’s presiding deity.
Throughout Kerala, a sadhya consists of a variety of traditional vegetarian dishes considered to have Ayurvedic properties. The food is usually served on banana or plantain leaves, with each meal typically incorporating anywhere between 10 and 20 dishes. However, with as many as 64 food items being served at one point during the festival, the Aranmula Valla Sadhya is considered one of the largest ritual vegetarian feasts in India — and the world.
While people feast on many dishes at different sadhyas during the lengthy festival, the largest sadhya (usually consisting of between 50 and 64 dishes) is held only on Ashtami Rohini Day, Lord Krishna’s birthday, which coincides with the festival.
The dishes
Throughout the festival, the sadhya dishes, thought to be Lord Krishna’s favourites, are served in a particular order and include manga achar (mango pickle), parippu (spiced lentils), sambar (a vegetable stew), thoran (a dry vegetable curry), kaalan (vegetables cooked in yoghurt), pappadams (thin, crisp flatbreads) and plantain chips, among many others.
For dessert, there’s payasam (rice and milk flavoured with cardamom and saffron) and fresh bananas. The meal is washed down with a special Ayurvedic herbal water called vellam that has been infused with botanicals such as fenugreek, cardamom, cumin, turmeric and a tree bark called karingali or khadir, giving it medicinal value.
Customary way to eat
The feast is held in the temple’s outer quadrangle inside oottupura, traditional dining halls where attendees either sit cross-legged on the floor or at communal tables. Following South Indian eating customs, diners consume the food with their right hand, with fingers cupped to form a ladle.
The legend
According to legend, a devout Brahmin once promised to provide all the food and drink for the Thiruvona Sadhya — another Keralawide sadhya that occurs on the final day of an older festival called Onam that’s usually held at the end of August or beginning of September — and deliver it to Parthasarathy Temple in a boat called the Thiruvona Thoni. The boat was attacked by enemy forces during its voyage along the Pamba, but local snake boats from the surrounding area came to its rescue, saving the day.
To honour this event, the Aranmula Valla Sadya festival was born, as well as another Aranmula tradition: an annual snake boat race called the Aranmula Vallamkali, which is held along the Keralan backwaters to mark the end of the festival. To this day, the Aranmula Valla Sadya and its boat race coincide with greater Kerala’s Onam celebrations.
An honoured reception
After each boat race practice along the Pamba, the crews of the 52 teams receive a special honour. As they arrive at the temple, they are given a riverside reception by devotees who are responsible for putting on an individual sadhya for them. But before they dive into the food, they circle the temple with the devotees while singing Vanchippattu, boatmen verses sung in the Malayalam language. After stopping at a holy shrine for prayer, the crews finally enter the dining hall.
During the feast, they dine alongside members of the public who have come to watch the teams practicing. Sitting at the head table, the crews are allowed to request refills of their food from the devotees, and they do this by singing their requests in the same rhythm as the Vanchippattu. The boat teams are also served special meal additions, such as butter and honey that’s poured into their hands by devotees.
Thousands of meals
Crews and members of the public are welcome to join these many different sadyas held before the boat race, and thousands of people attend each day of the two-monthlong extravaganza. Each feast serves a minimum of 250 people, and last year, the dining halls were booked more than 450 times.
In 2016, a total of 500 000 people — including the oarsman from the 52 snake boat teams — were estimated to have participated in the Aranmula Valla Sadhya. On Ashtami Rohini Day alone, around 100 000 people visited Parthasarathy Temple to join the biggest of the festival’s feasts called the Ashtami Rohini Valla Sadhya.
Uncertain future
For the first time in the history of the Aranmula Valla Sadya, the temple made the decision to cancel this year’s rituals due to the Covid-19 pandemic, to the dismay of the many people who had already booked their spots at the sadhyas and were looking forward to the festivities.
However, with traditions like the Valla Sadya Festival resonating so deeply within Keralan culture, it is unsurprising that devotees and organisers hope to celebrate it for years to come. — BBC Online.