Onam in UK:)

The festival of Onam was just around the corner. Flower kolams, payasams, festivity in the air, the traditional malayalee saees adorned with golden zari..well, I really wanted all of these no matter which part of the world I was in.

It was just the eve of Onam when we realised that we had to gather flowers. It was almost 4:00 pm and all stores had closed for the day. We had relied on the bouquets that were sold in the super markets as out source of flowers to decorate the kolam.

Onam in UK- this is how it was going to be, I thought!!

But it turned out to be more fun. We reached home, had a cup of tea and decided to venture out and try our luck with flowers. I reminisced my trip to poomarket. What a lovely trip that always used to be. Flower keepers exhibiting richly coloured ones on either sides of the pathway, lotuses blossoing with glory, jasmines and roses filling the air with their fragrance, bright yellow saamandhi flowers painting the atmosphere with yellow, orange kanankambaram flowers hanging from the stalls....UK presented a different picture.

With a plastic bag in our hands, we ventured to the nearby lake where we had seen golden yellow flowers dancing in the breeze. We had relied on them. But suddenly, they were missing. The whole landscape which had once been carpeted by their existence was just plain and dry now.

Without losing our enthusiasm, we ventured to another street where we thought we would see bright pink, lavender flowers. On our way, we say bushes covered with flowers, flowers that grew with noone catering to them, flowers that just sprung from nowhere.

We started gathering them-some known, some unknown-small ones, medium sized ones-pink, yellow, white, lavender, red. We must have been the only people gathering flowers from the road. Did we mind? Not at all!!

Well, we now needed a place to draw a kolam. The outside was carpetted and I didnt want to risk drawing on that. One of us had bought a new shirt that had a piece of cardboard placed. Optimum utilization of available resources:)

A little bit of colouring, some sketching....

And the ultimate result of that adventure is what you see here.