Onam celebrations may have evolved with changing times, but one tradition that continues to remain at the heart of Kerala’s harvest festival is the grand Onam Sadhya — an elaborate 26-course feast traditionally served on a banana leaf.
With the first day of Onam beginning, kitchens across Kerala are preparing for what is often the most elaborate meal of the year. The celebrations are set to gather momentum through Wednesday, the festival’s most important day, and continue through the third and fourth Onam.
At the centre of the festivities remains the Sadhya.
Onam is widely regarded as one of Kerala’s most inclusive festivals, bringing together people across caste, religious and social boundaries. The festival evokes memories of a mythical golden age associated with prosperity, equality and abundance, although contemporary celebrations represent a recreation of that ideal rather than a reflection of the past.
Kerala’s traditional joint-family structure, once marked by large ancestral homes filled with several generations of relatives, has largely changed. The sight of extended families sitting together in long dining rows has become less common.
Yet Onam continues to provide an occasion for families to reunite. Siblings and relatives living in different places often return home for the festival, with the Sadhya becoming the centrepiece of an annual family gathering, even if such gatherings are now smaller than in earlier generations.
The traditional feast consists of a carefully arranged variety of dishes, each served in an established order on a plantain leaf. Rice is accompanied by preparations such as parippu and ghee, sambar, avial, thoran, olan, kalan, erissery, pickles, pachadi, kichadi, papad, banana and chips, followed by different varieties of payasam.
The changing nature of celebrations has also created a growing seasonal market around the traditional meal. Small caterers, restaurants and hotels have increasingly turned the Onam Sadhya into a major festive business, offering prepared meals to families unable to cook the elaborate spread at home.
Many households now opt for Sadhya parcels delivered to their doorsteps. Prices generally begin at around Rs 300 and can exceed Rs 1,000 at premium hotels, depending on the scale of the meal and the venue.
However, whether served on a banana leaf in an ancestral home, arranged in a modest apartment or packed in a takeaway box, the central tradition remains unchanged.
For a few days each year, families across Kerala come together around a shared meal. At the heart of that gathering remains the 26-course Sadhya — a feast that continues to bind Onam and Kerala together across generations.
(With IANS inputs)
