From the Paddy Fields to the Flower Market, and Back to the Soil

There was a time when Onam did not begin in a flower market.

It began in the garden.

It began at the edge of a paddy field, beside a pond, along a fence, near a pathway, in the backyard and in the small patches of green that surrounded a Kerala home.

It began with a child carrying a small basket.

The task was simple: find flowers.

A few would come from the family garden. Some might be collected from a neighbour's compound with permission. Others could be found along field bunds, paths, and other places where seasonal plants grew. Children would return home with whatever the land had offered the previous evening or that morning.

Then the flowers would be sorted. The pookkalam would be designed. And the celebration would begin.

The flower carpet was not simply something people made. It was something they gathered from their surroundings.

In earlier times, pookkalams traditionally used locally available flowers, while many of those native flowers have become scarce even in villages today.

That difference tells us something much larger than the story of a flower.

It tells us how Kerala has changed.

The old pookkalam began with a question:

“What flowers does nature have for us today?”

The modern pookkalam increasingly begins with another:

“What flowers do we need to buy to create this design?”

The difference may appear small.

Ecologically, culturally and psychologically, it is enormous.

The landscape itself was once the catalogue

For generations, the pookkalam was closely connected with the landscape around the home.

It reflected the season. It reflected biodiversity.

It reflected agricultural life.

It reflected what grew in a particular village.

And, perhaps most importantly, it reflected what people noticed.

The pookkalam was not necessarily designed first and then supplied according to a shopping list. The flowers available around the household helped determine what could be created.

If thumba was flowering, thumba could become part of the pookkalam.

If mukkutti was available, it could provide colour.

If chethi was blooming in a garden, it could contribute red.

If sankhupushpam was growing nearby, its blue could become part of the design.

Traditional pookkalam practices featured a variety of locally available flowers and seasonal plants, including thumba, mukkutti, kanthali, mandaram and sankhupushpam. Other traditional accounts also mention flowers such as chethi and chemparathy. Among the most intriguing are flowers locally remembered as “Onam poo” or “Onappoovu”, seasonal flowers associated with the Onam period whose exact identity can vary across regions and whose traditional presence has become increasingly difficult to trace. Today, even searching for “Onam poo” online may not reliably yield the specific flower remembered by older generations; instead, searches often return images of pookalams or unrelated flowers. This gap between cultural memory and readily identifiable botanical records is itself worth documenting.

The flowers were not merely decorative objects.

They were part of a living landscape.

That meant the pookkalam itself became an informal biodiversity lesson.

A child learned the name of a plant because the plant mattered.

A child noticed when a flower appeared because its flowering season mattered.

A child remembered where a particular flower grew because they needed it for Onam.

The festival created ecological knowledge without calling it environmental education.

That is one of the most beautiful things we may have lost.

When collecting flowers was part of celebrating Onam

Older generations often remember the days when children went looking for flowers rather than simply going to a shop to buy them.

The search itself was part of the festival.

There was the excitement of discovering a flower.

There was the walk through the neighbourhood.

There was asking a neighbour for permission.

There was exchanging flowers between households.

There was the small competition among children to see who could return with the most interesting colours.

There was the sorting and cleaning of flowers at home.

There was the anticipation of the next morning.

In some places, flowers were carried in traditional containers or gathered in leaves rather than in today's disposable plastic bags. Older tradition even recalls children collecting flowers in makeshift leaf containers while singing Onam songs.

The pookkalam therefore began long before the first flower was placed on the ground.

It began with participation.

Today, many of us still create natural pookkalams.

But the relationship behind them has changed.

The flowers may be completely natural.

The pookkalam may be made entirely from real flowers.

Yet the flowers may have travelled through a long commercial chain before reaching us.

The pookkalam may look local.

Its supply chain may not be.

How did we move from the backyard to the flower market?

The answer is not that one generation suddenly stopped loving nature.

Kerala itself changed.

Our villages changed.

Our land changed.

Our economy changed.

Our lifestyles changed.

Paddy fields have declined or been converted in many places. Agricultural land has been fragmented. Homes have become more compact. Open spaces have become construction sites, roads, parking areas and commercial properties. Urbanisation has expanded. Gardens have changed.

Traditional plants have increasingly competed with ornamental plants, commercial crops and built infrastructure.

Even our understanding of the word “weed” has changed.

A plant that an older generation might have recognised as a seasonal flowering plant may now simply be removed because it looks untidy.

A wildflower does not always disappear because people deliberately destroy it.

Sometimes it disappears because people stop noticing it.

And once people stop noticing a plant, they stop protecting it.

Once they stop protecting it, they stop cultivating it.

Eventually, they stop remembering it.

The flowers of Onam that a generation may never know

Perhaps the saddest part of this transformation is not that flowers are now purchased.

It is that some of the flowers once familiar to Malayali households are becoming unfamiliar to younger generations.

Consider thumba (Leucas aspera)

It is a small white flower, not necessarily as spectacular as a large rose or dahlia.

But Onam did not historically require every flower to be spectacular.

Small flowers mattered.

Wild flowers mattered.

Seasonal flowers mattered.

The flowers growing at the edges of fields mattered.

Thumba is part of the traditional first-day pookkalam and notes the declining presence of traditional flowers such as thumba, thechi, mukkutti, kanthali, krishnakireedam and kashithumba in contemporary pookkalams.

There were also flowers and plants known through local names and oral traditions, among them flowers remembered as Onam poo or Onappoovu.

The mystery of the forgotten Onam poo

Ask an older person about a flower they remember as Onam poo.

They may describe a plant that flowered around the agricultural season and was associated with Onam.

But ask a younger person to identify it.

Then try searching for it online.

The result can be surprisingly confusing.

Instead of one clearly identifiable plant, an internet search may return pookkalams, generic Onam decorations, unrelated flowers or different plants carrying similar local names.

This is not necessarily because Google is failing.

It is because search engines depend upon what has been photographed, named, digitised and indexed.

A local plant remembered by farmers and grandparents may never have been properly documented online.

That gives us a profound ecological warning:

A plant can disappear before its name disappears.

And perhaps one day, the reverse can happen too:

The name remains.

The memory remains.

But nobody can confidently show a child the plant that the name once described.

That is why local botanical documentation matters.

Universities, agricultural institutions, botanical researchers, biodiversity committees, local historians and older residents could work together to document traditional Onam flowers, recording their local names, scientific identities where established, habitats, flowering periods and changes in abundance.

The memories of older generations should not be dismissed as folklore merely because Google cannot immediately find the answer.

Google can show us the world. It cannot restore a vanished landscape.

When the flower disappears, the landscape disappears with it

The disappearance of a traditional flower is rarely only about that flower.

It may indicate the disappearance of the habitat in which it grew.

A paddy field may have become a building.

A field bund may have disappeared.

A pond margin may have been concretised.

A vacant patch may have become a parking area.

A traditional home garden may have been replaced by a compact urban compound.

A plant that depended on a particular agricultural environment may no longer find the conditions it needs.

This is why cultural conservation and biodiversity conservation are often connected.

When we protect a traditional flower, we may also be protecting:

• the soil in which it grows,
• the insects associated with it,
• the agricultural landscape around it,
• the knowledge of how it propagates,
• the people who cultivate it,
• and the cultural memory attached to it.

The pookkalam can therefore become a surprisingly powerful entry point into biodiversity conservation.

The flower did not disappear from Onam. It travelled.

There is another way to understand the modern transformation.

The flower did not necessarily disappear.

In many cases, it moved.

It moved from the backyard to the farm.

From the farm to the wholesaler.

From the wholesaler to the truck.

From the truck to the market.

From the market to our home.

And then into the pookkalam.

Kerala's flower markets during Onam now receive substantial supplies from outside the state. Major supply regions including Thovala, Tenkasi, Sundarapandiyapuram, Aykudi and Sambavar Vadakarai in Tamil Nadu, and Gundlupet and Hosur in Karnataka.

Current market reporting also shows how strongly Onam demand affects flower trade across the Kerala–Tamil Nadu border, with Coimbatore markets seeing increased demand for flowers destined for Kerala during the 2026 Onam season.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this trade.

Tamil Nadu farmers are responding to a market.

Karnataka farmers are responding to a market.

Kerala consumers create that market.

The farmers who grow these flowers deserve recognition, not blame.

The more important question is:

Why has Kerala created such a large seasonal demand for flowers without creating a proportionately strong local production system?

That is a question about our own agricultural choices.

The carbon footprint hidden inside a beautiful flower

A flower looks innocent.

It is natural.

It is biodegradable.

It will eventually return to the soil.

But sustainability is not determined only by what happens to a product after we use it.

We must also ask:

Where did it come from?

A flower grown in the garden beside our house and carried in a reusable basket has a very different journey from a flower cultivated far away, harvested, sorted, packaged, transported by road, distributed through wholesale and retail markets and finally carried home.

The exact carbon footprint of a particular flower cannot be calculated simply from its name.

It depends on:

• how it was cultivated,
• how much irrigation it required,
• what agricultural inputs were used,
• how far it travelled,
• what vehicle transported it,
• whether it required energy-intensive storage,
• how it was packaged,
• and how much of it was wasted.

So we should not make the simplistic claim that every flower transported from another state is environmentally disastrous.

Nor should we assume that every locally grown flower has zero impact.

The more accurate principle is this:

Distance, production practices, inputs, packaging, transport and wastage all matter.

The flower may be natural.

The supply chain around the flower may not be.

The pookkalam has become a map of consumption

There is something remarkable about today's Onam flower market.

We can walk into a market and choose colours almost as though we were selecting paint.

Yellow, Orange, Red, White, Pink, Purple.

We decide the design.

Then we ask the market to provide the materials.

This is convenient.

It is also a major cultural shift.

The old pookkalam largely adapted itself to the landscape.

The modern pookkalam increasingly asks the landscape, or rather, the agricultural and commercial system, to adapt itself to our desired design.

That is why pookkalam competitions have introduced another dimension to the festival.

Competitions can be wonderful. They encourage creativity, teamwork and participation.

But when size, complexity and visual spectacle become the dominant measures of success, consumption can quietly become part of the competition.

A bigger pookkalam requires more flowers.

More flowers create more demand.

More demand encourages more commercial cultivation and transportation.

The festival becomes increasingly dependent on a supply chain that few of us see.

Perhaps it is time to introduce another definition of a beautiful pookkalam.

What if the most beautiful pookkalam was the one that grew around us?

Imagine a pookkalam with a small card beside it:

Flowers grown within 2 kilometres of this home.

Another: Flowers cultivated by 75 families in this neighbourhood.

Another: No single-use plastic used.

Another: 20 traditional flowering plants conserved.

Another: Flowers grown by our schoolchildren.

Another: All flowers composted after Onam.

Now the pookkalam is communicating something beyond beauty.

It is communicating responsibility.

Perhaps future competitions could include categories such as:

Best Local-Flower Pookkalam

Best Community-Grown Pookkalam

Best Traditional Flower Pookkalam

Best Biodiversity Pookkalam

Lowest-Waste Pookkalam

Plastic-Free Pookkalam

Best School Flower Garden

Best Seed-Saving Initiative

Then competition itself becomes a tool for ecological restoration.

And then came the plastic bag

There is a strange contradiction in the modern pookkalam.

We may create a completely natural floral carpet.

And then carry those natural flowers home in a single-use plastic bag.

The flowers will disappear.

The plastic may remain for generations.

Earlier, people used baskets, leaves, cloth or reusable household containers to carry flowers and other materials.

Today, we have a very easy opportunity to recover that principle.

If we buy flowers from a market, carry our own basket or reusable bag.

A cloth bag.

A bamboo basket.

A reusable shopping bag.

A household container.

Anything that avoids accepting another unnecessary disposable plastic cover.

It is a small act.

But sustainability is often built from small actions repeated by millions of people.

The principle is beautifully simple:

The pookkalam should be temporary. The waste should not be permanent.

Natural or artificial: which pookkalam is really greener?

The modern festival has introduced another question.

Artificial flowers.

Synthetic floral mats.

Decorative sheets.

Reusable pookkalam materials.

At first glance, the answer seems obvious:

Natural flowers are good.

Artificial flowers are bad.

But environmental questions are rarely that simple.

A synthetic product used once and thrown away can create a serious waste problem.

A durable reusable product that remains in use for ten or fifteen years is a different proposition.

Likewise, a natural flower grown with intensive inputs and transported over a long distance is not automatically impact-free.

The correct question is not simply:

“Is it natural?”

It is:

“What is it made from, how was it produced, how long will we use it, and what happens at the end of its life?”

For people who have access to gardens or community-grown flowers, a locally sourced natural pookkalam can be an excellent choice.

For people living in apartments or places without access to flowers, a durable, reusable and responsibly made alternative may sometimes be practical.

The environmental principle should be:

Reduce. Reuse. Repair. Compost where appropriate. Avoid unnecessary disposability.

Why don't we grow the flowers ourselves?

This may be the most important question of the entire discussion.

Kerala has gardens.

Kerala has farmers.

Kerala has schools.

Kerala has colleges.

Kerala has panchayats and municipalities.

Kerala has residents' associations.

Kerala has community organisations.

Kerala has terraces, balconies, institutional land and countless small pieces of land.

So why shouldn't we grow more of our Onam flowers ourselves?

Not necessarily all of them.

Not necessarily everywhere.

But more.

Efforts have been made to expand flower cultivation within the state and that local self-government institutions have supported farmers in this direction. It also explicitly links the growing demand created by pookkalam competitions with the need to cultivate more flowers locally.

This means the idea is not unrealistic.

It is already happening in parts of Kerala.

The question is whether it can become much larger.

Imagine an Onam Community Flower Garden

Imagine every suitable village having one.

Imagine every municipality identifying appropriate public or institutional spaces for community biodiversity gardens.

Imagine schools growing traditional Onam flowers.

Imagine apartment associations maintaining a small shared flower garden.

Imagine farmers cultivating flowers specifically for the local Onam market.

Imagine neighbourhood groups exchanging seeds and planting materials.

Imagine children visiting the garden during the months before Onam.

The garden grows.

The children watch.

The flowers appear.

Then Onam arrives.

The flowers are harvested carefully.

They are carried home in baskets.

The pookkalam is created.

After the festival, the flowers are composted.

Seeds are collected.

The plants remain.

And the cycle begins again.

Plant → grow → flower → celebrate → compost → seed → plant again.

That is not merely a flower garden.

It is a circular cultural system.

The pookkalam can become a biodiversity classroom

Imagine a school beginning an Onam garden several months before the festival.

Every plant has a small label.

Malayalam name.

English name.

Scientific name.

Flowering season.

Traditional use.

Where it grows.

Children record when the first flower appears.

They observe insects visiting the plants.

They learn how seeds are formed.

They collect seeds after the season.

They plant again.

By the time Onam arrives, the pookkalam has become the final product of months of learning.

A child who grows a flower is much more likely to remember its name.

A child who watches it bloom is more likely to understand seasonality.

A child who learns that a flower disappeared because its habitat disappeared begins to understand conservation.

The pookkalam then becomes an ecological textbook without looking like one.

Can Kerala become self-reliant in Onam flowers?

Complete self-sufficiency is neither necessary nor always desirable.

Kerala does not need to produce everything it consumes.

Inter-state trade is an important part of the Indian economy.

There will always be flowers that make economic sense to source from elsewhere.

The goal should therefore not be isolation.

It should be local resilience.

If Kerala can grow a larger share of the flowers required for a major seasonal festival, several benefits can follow:

local farmers receive new markets;

transport requirements for that portion of demand may fall;

traditional flowering plants can receive renewed attention;

unused spaces can become productive;

children can reconnect with cultivation;

community organisations can participate;

and Kerala becomes less vulnerable to sudden disruptions in external supply.

The question is not:

“Why are we buying from Tamil Nadu?”

It is:

“What should Kerala reasonably grow here, and where is regional trade still the better choice?”

That is a much more constructive question.

Perhaps our dependence begins long before the flower market

The flower question is actually part of a larger conversation about Kerala.

We often depend on other regions for food, agricultural products, construction materials, flowers and many other necessities.

This is not automatically a failure.

Kerala's geography, population density, limited land availability, urbanisation and economic structure all influence what we produce.

But dependence becomes a problem when we lose the capacity to produce things that could reasonably be produced locally.

A flower required for a major seasonal cultural festival is particularly interesting because it offers an opportunity for decentralised cultivation.

A household can grow some.

A school can grow some.

A community can grow some.

A farmer can grow commercially.

A local government can facilitate.

The market can supply the remainder.

That is a more resilient system than simply depending on a distant supply chain for everything.

The psychology of the old pookkalam

There is another reason why this matters.

It is psychological.

The old pookkalam created anticipation.

Children did not simply receive Onam.

They prepared for it.

They waited for flowers to bloom.

They searched.

They collected.

They negotiated with neighbours.

They sorted flowers.

They sat together.

They created something.

Modern life has compressed many of these activities.

We buy flowers.

We buy clothes.

We buy decorations.

We order food.

We photograph the celebration.

Everything is ready.

Convenience is not bad.

For people working long hours, living in cities or away from their hometowns, convenience can make celebration possible.

But when preparation disappears completely, something else can disappear with it:

participation.

A pookkalam made from flowers a child planted six months earlier carries a different emotional weight from one assembled from flowers purchased ten minutes earlier.

The first contains memory.

The flower collection was also social infrastructure

The old practice connected people.

Children visited neighbours.

Neighbours exchanged flowers.

Families shared plants.

People walked through their locality.

Older people passed botanical knowledge to younger people.

A child could ask:

“What flower is this?”

Someone would answer.

“Where does it grow?”

Someone would explain.

“When will it flower again?”

Someone would know.

The festival therefore created a network of informal knowledge.

Today, many children may know the names of mobile applications, brands, cars and online games but struggle to identify the flowers growing outside their own homes.

That is not because children are less intelligent.

It is because their environment has changed.

If we want ecological literacy, we cannot expect children to learn nature only from textbooks.

They need direct encounters with living things.

Onam should give children something a screen cannot

A photograph of thumba is not thumba.

A Google image of a pookkalam is not the experience of collecting flowers.

A video of a field is not the smell of wet soil.

A digital botanical database is valuable—but it cannot replace walking through a garden.

Technology can help us document nature.

It can help identify plants.

It can help preserve knowledge.

It can connect communities.

But technology should become a bridge to nature, not a substitute for nature.

Perhaps the most valuable Onam experience we can give a child is not another photograph.

It is a small basket.

And a morning spent looking for flowers.

The danger of turning celebration into consumption

Modern consumer culture often tells us that a better festival means more.

More flowers.

More decoration.

More clothes.

More food.

More lights.

More gifts.

More photographs.

More elaborate designs.

But prosperity and excess are not the same thing.

Onam celebrates abundance.

That does not mean Onam needs waste.

A pookkalam made with a handful of locally grown flowers can be more meaningful than one requiring enormous quantities of flowers transported long distances.

A sadya carefully prepared and eaten without waste can be more abundant in spirit than a feast in which large quantities are thrown away.

An Onakkodi worn for years can have more value than several outfits bought for a single festival.

A small community celebration can create stronger memories than an enormous event where nobody knows one another.

Perhaps we need to redefine what Onam prosperity means.

Onakkodi: can new clothes have an old wisdom?

Onakkodi is an important part of Onam.

There is no need to reject the tradition of wearing new clothes.

But we can change the way we practise it.

Choose clothes that are durable.

Choose designs that can be worn beyond Onam.

Consider supporting local handloom traditions and artisans.

Avoid buying simply because something is heavily discounted.

Repair good garments.

Reuse them.

Pass them on when appropriate.

The question is not:

“Did I buy a new Onam dress?”

It is:

“Will this dress have a life beyond this Onam?”

A garment becomes more meaningful, not less, when we understand the labour, materials and resources behind it.

The Onam sadya and the meaning of abundance

The sadya offers another opportunity.

A traditional sadya already contains many elements that contemporary sustainability discussions value: a plant-rich meal, diverse vegetables, traditional culinary knowledge and, traditionally, serving on banana leaves.

Kerala Tourism identifies the sadya served on banana leaves as one of the central features of Onam.

But modern celebrations can also create substantial food waste.

The environmental cost of wasted food is much larger than the food itself.

Behind a plate of rice or vegetables are:

soil,

water,

seeds,

labour,

fertiliser,

energy,

transport,

cooking fuel

and human effort.

When food is thrown away, all of those resources are wasted too.

So an environmentally conscious sadya does not need to be a smaller sadya.

It needs to be a respected sadya.

Cook according to the number of people.

Serve thoughtfully.

Take more if needed.

Avoid excessive disposable items where reusable alternatives are practical.

Compost unavoidable organic waste.

Let prosperity mean that everyone has enough, not that everything must be excessive.

What about decorations, electricity and public celebrations?

The same philosophy can extend beyond flowers.

Onam decorations can favour reusable materials.

Lighting can use energy-efficient systems.

Temporary structures can be designed for reuse.

Banners and promotional materials can be reduced or reused.

Public events can manage waste before it becomes a problem rather than after the festival.

Sound systems can be used responsibly, respecting residential areas, hospitals, schools and sensitive environments.

The objective is not to make Onam silent, colourless or joyless.

It is to ensure that celebration does not create unnecessary environmental costs.

What happens to the pookkalam after Onam?

This is where the natural pookkalam has an extraordinary advantage.

Flowers are organic matter.

They can return to the soil.

They can be composted.

They can become part of a community composting system.

They can contribute nutrients back to gardens.

The cycle can therefore become:

flower → celebration → compost → soil → plant → flower.

Compare that with:

synthetic decoration → single use → mixed waste → disposal.

This is why the end of the festival matters as much as the beginning.

A sustainable celebration must ask:

“Where will this material go when the celebration is over?”

The forgotten basket deserves to return

Perhaps one of the simplest changes we can make this Onam is also one of the most symbolic.

Take a basket.

Take a cloth bag.

Take a reusable container.

Go to the market.

Buy the flowers if you need them.

But refuse the unnecessary plastic packaging.

There is something almost poetic about bringing back the old basket in a modern form.

The basket does not need to be exactly the same as the one our grandparents used.

The principle is what matters.

Reusable instead of disposable.

Local where practical.

Conscious instead of automatic.

We don't have to stop buying flowers

Environmental messages often fail when they become unrealistic.

Not every family has a garden.

Not everyone has land.

Not everyone has time.

Apartment residents may have only a balcony.

People living away from their ancestral homes may have no access to traditional plants.

So the answer cannot simply be:

“Do not buy flowers.”

A more realistic hierarchy is:

First, use flowers from your own garden if available.

Then consider flowers grown by neighbours or within your community.

Then consider locally grown flowers from nearby farmers.

If you need to buy flowers from outside Kerala, buy consciously and avoid unnecessary waste.

Carry reusable packaging.

Purchase only what you need.

Compost the flowers afterwards.

And most importantly:

plant something for next year's Onam.

Even one pot is a beginning.

The flower market does not have to disappear

The answer is not to destroy the flower market.

Farmers need markets.

Traders need livelihoods.

Consumers need access to flowers.

The market can actually become part of the solution.

Imagine stronger local seasonal flower cultivation in Kerala.

Farmers could grow suitable flowers for the Onam season.

Farmer groups could coordinate production.

Local markets could connect farmers directly with households.

Schools and institutions could purchase locally grown flowers.

Community gardens could supplement commercial cultivation.

Local governments could support training, planting material and market linkages where appropriate.

The objective is not to eliminate inter-state trade.

It is to create a more diversified and resilient flower system.

What if every school had an Onam biodiversity garden?

This could become one of the most meaningful changes Kerala could make.

Before Onam, schools could establish small gardens containing traditional and locally appropriate flowering plants.

Children could:

plant,

water,

observe,

record,

identify,

photograph,

document,

save seeds

and finally harvest flowers for the pookkalam.

Imagine the pookkalam on the final day.

Every flower has a story.

“I planted this.”

“We grew this as a class.”

“This flower appeared for the first time this year.”

“This variety was given to us by my grandmother.”

Now the pookkalam is no longer merely a decoration.

It is an annual record of ecological learning.

What if every panchayat and municipality created an Onam flower corridor?

The same idea can extend beyond schools.

Suitable public and institutional spaces could be developed as small biodiversity gardens or flowering corridors, taking local ecological conditions and safety into account.

A panchayat could support community flower gardens.

A municipality could encourage residential associations to establish shared gardens.

Local biodiversity groups could document traditional plants.

Farmers could supply seedlings.

Schools could maintain demonstration plots.

Community organisations could organise seed exchanges.

The objective should not be merely to produce flowers for ten days.

The garden should remain after Onam.

That distinction is crucial.

We should not create an Onam garden that disappears after Onam.

We should create a biodiversity garden that gives us Onam flowers.

Let the pookkalam become a map of its surroundings again

There is something beautiful about imagining the future pookkalam this way.

The white could come from a flower grown in the courtyard.

The red from a neighbour's garden.

The yellow from the community plot.

The blue from a plant growing along the fence.

The green from the household garden.

Every colour would have an origin.

Every origin would have a story.

Every story would connect the pookkalam to the landscape.

Then the pookkalam becomes something more than decoration.

It becomes a map of the place where we live.

And if one flower disappears from the pookkalam, we notice.

If children ask, “What flower is this?”, we have an answer.

If they ask, “Where does it grow?”, we can take them there.

And if they ask, “Why can't we find it anymore?”, perhaps that question can become the beginning of conservation.

Perhaps Onam itself could become Kerala's annual biodiversity festival

Onam already reaches homes, schools, workplaces, villages and cities across Kerala.

Why not use that cultural power?

Imagine an Onam season in which communities ask:

How many traditional flowers did we grow?

How many flowers came from our locality?

How much single-use plastic did we avoid?

How much food was wasted?

How many children learned the names of local flowers?

How many seeds were saved?

How many community gardens were created?

How many disappearing plants were documented?

These could become annual indicators of cultural and ecological progress.

The festival would still be joyful.

But it would also leave something behind.

Not just photographs.

Not just waste.

Plants. Seeds. Knowledge. Soil.

We should not romanticise the past

There is an important caution here.

The past was not perfect.

Earlier generations faced poverty, hard physical labour, limited healthcare, social inequalities and many other difficulties.

We should not pretend that everything traditional was automatically sustainable.

Nor should we reject modern technology, markets or development.

Modern science can help us improve agricultural productivity, conserve water, monitor biodiversity, reduce emissions and restore ecosystems.

The goal is not to recreate the Kerala of fifty or a hundred years ago.

The goal is to recover the ecological intelligence embedded in some traditional practices and combine it with modern knowledge.

That is what a genuinely modern Onam could be.

Not anti-development.

Not anti-technology.

Not anti-market.

But consciously sustainable.

The Onam we lost may still be waiting in the soil

Somewhere in Kerala, there may still be a plant that an older generation remembers.

Somewhere, an elderly farmer may know its local name.

Somewhere, a neglected garden may contain a traditional flowering plant.

Somewhere, a field margin may still produce a flower that has almost disappeared elsewhere.

Somewhere, there may be seeds.

And perhaps we need to find them.

Not merely because we want to recreate an old pookkalam.

But because every disappearing plant represents a piece of ecological and cultural knowledge.

The challenge is to find them before the memories disappear along with them.

A new Onam need not return to the past

Onam has changed because Kerala has changed.

Our families have changed.

Our cities have expanded.

Our agricultural systems have changed.

Our working lives have changed.

Markets have expanded.

Technology has transformed the way we communicate.

These changes cannot simply be reversed.

But traditions are living things.

They adapt.

The question is whether every adaptation must lead to greater consumption.

Can modernity also mean greater ecological awareness?

Can convenience coexist with responsibility?

Can technology help preserve traditional knowledge rather than replace it?

Can a festival become more sustainable without becoming less joyful?

There is no reason why it cannot.

Perhaps the greatest thing we need to bring back is not the flower, but the relationship

It is tempting to think that saving Onam's ecological heritage simply means planting thumba again.

That is important.

But it is not enough.

What we need to restore is the relationship.

The relationship between the child and the plant.

Between the household and the garden.

Between neighbours.

Between farmers and consumers.

Between the festival and the season.

Between the pookkalam and the landscape.

Between celebration and responsibility.

Once that relationship returns, the flower will have a place again.

An Onam pledge for a changing Kerala

This Onam, perhaps we can make a few quiet promises.

We can learn the names of the flowers that once surrounded our homes.

We can ask our grandparents what flowers they collected as children.

We can identify and document flowers that are disappearing from our locality.

We can grow at least one traditional flowering plant.

We can encourage schools to establish biodiversity gardens.

We can support local farmers growing suitable seasonal flowers.

We can carry a reusable basket or cloth bag when buying flowers.

We can refuse unnecessary plastic packaging.

We can choose reusable decorations.

We can choose Onakkodi thoughtfully.

We can reduce food waste.

We can compost flowers after the celebration.

We can save seeds.

And we can begin preparing for next year's pookkalam before this year's pookkalam has even faded.

Because perhaps the most sustainable pookkalam is not the one that uses the greatest number of flowers.

It is the one that creates the greatest number of flowers for the future.

The pookkalam of the future

Imagine a child in Kerala several years from now.

It is the morning of Thiruvonam.

The child walks outside carrying a small basket.

There is no need to ask where the flowers came from.

Some grew in the family garden.

Some came from the neighbour.

Some came from the community flower garden.

Some were purchased from a local farmer.

The child knows the names.

Thumba.

Mukkutti.

Chethi.

Sankhupushpam.

And perhaps other flowers that today's children barely recognise.

The child knows that some of them were almost lost.

The child knows that someone saved their seeds.

Someone planted them.

Someone cared for them.

Someone taught their name.

Now the child places them carefully into the pookkalam.

The flowers will last only for a short time.

But the knowledge will remain.

After Onam, the flowers will return to the soil.

The seeds will be saved.

The garden will continue.

And next year, another child will carry the basket.

That is not a return to the past.

It is something better.

It is the past's ecological wisdom carried forward into the future.

Let Onam celebrate what we want Kerala to become

Onam is often described as a celebration of prosperity, abundance, equality, togetherness and the return of Mahabali.

Perhaps we can add another idea to that understanding of prosperity.

Ecological abundance.

A prosperous Kerala is not only one with more buildings, more consumption and more purchasing power.

It is also a Kerala where paddy fields survive where they should.

Where home gardens remain productive.

Where children know the plants around them.

Where farmers can earn from diverse crops.

Where traditional flowers are still found.

Where community gardens flourish.

Where food is valued rather than wasted.

Where clothes are used rather than quickly discarded.

Where celebrations create memories rather than mountains of waste.

Where plastic does not become the hidden companion of every natural flower.

And where a child can still walk beside a field and recognise a flower that their grandmother once used for Onam.

Perhaps that is what it means to bring Onam back to the soil.

Not to reject the modern world.

Not to romanticise yesterday.

But to make sure that, in our rush toward the future, we do not lose the living landscape that gave the festival its meaning.

The pookkalam of the future can be larger than a flower carpet.

It can be a statement about what we value.

It can say that local biodiversity matters.

That farmers matter.

That soil matters.

That children learning the names of plants matters.

That reusable materials matter.

That food should not be wasted.

That celebrations should not leave unnecessary pollution behind.

That prosperity should include the health of the land.

And perhaps one day, a child will stand in a Kerala garden on the morning of Thiruvonam, holding a small basket and looking at a flower that has once again become familiar.

An adult may ask:

“Do you know where this flower came from?”

The child may smile and say:

“It grew here.”

And perhaps that simple answer will tell us that we have not merely preserved a tradition.

We have preserved the relationship between Onam and the land that gives it life.

The most sustainable pookkalam

It is not necessarily the biggest.

It is not necessarily the most expensive.

It is not necessarily the most elaborate.

It may not even be the one with the greatest number of colours.

The most sustainable pookkalam is the one that leaves something behind.

Flowers.

Seeds.

Healthy soil.

Biodiversity.

Knowledge.

Community.

Memories.

And the possibility of making another pookkalam next year.

Because Onam does not have to return to the past.

But the future of Onam can remember what the past understood about nature.

And perhaps the most beautiful pookkalam of all is the one we begin planting before Onam arrives.