August 19th is the start of Onam, which is a harvest festival celebrated for 10 days in the state of Kerala. Today is called as Atham and the last day as”ThiruOnam”. On the day of ThiruOnam big flower rangolis are made to welcome their King Mahabali. Below is the story 🙂
According to the Hindu Mythology “Lord Vishnu” incarnated as a human being to defeat the Demon King Baali, who conquered earth and demigods world.
King Bali was a great ruler, during his reign, the people in his kingdom were happy and prosperous and he was loved by his subjects. He performed severe penance to Lord Vishnu and in turn he was granted with a boon. The boon was he wanted the same power of “Indra”,a demigod, where defeat shouldn’t be pronounced to King Bali in the battlefield.
By this boon, he conquered all worlds, this made Indra jealous and he bewailed to his mother about Bali’s achievement. All to the above Indra, he detested the good name bagged by the King Bali and the love he earned from his subjects. Indra’s mother, Aditi took the pain of her child and promised to wipe her son’s fret. So she performed penance to invoke Lord Vishnu and he appeared before her, asked her wish. She wanted her son Indra to defeat Bali and get his kingdom back.
As Lord Vishnu had given Bali the boon, but he didn’t change his verdict but assured Aditi that her wish will be granted.
Lord Vishnu incarnated as a small dark short boy named Vaamanaa, born to Aditi and her husband Kashyap. The boy grew intellectually.on the day he visited King Bali, he was about to perform his 100th Yaaga to attain supremacy. The King was pleased to see this little boy and granted to wish anything he wanted. The boy asked for 3 steps of his kingdom. King Bali who had a generous heart who never sent anyone empty handed granted his the little boy’s wish. The little boy, grew and grew bigger till he reached above to all worlds. The first step on earth and next on the sky, and he had no other space to step on, Now King Bali offered his head to rest the Lord’s feet. After his defeat King Bali was sent to Nederlands and Indra had his kingdom back.
King Bali was given a wish that he can visit his kingdom once in a year to see his people, its on Onam. He is welcomed by his people with flower rangolis made on the streets as a flower carpet to their King.
This is the story behind the festival of “Onam”
A small star kolam enhanced with colours.
This is a 13 dots kolam. Place 13 dots in the centre coloumn and decrease the dot count by one either side by placing in between the dots of the previous column. Stop till the dot count reaches to 7 in number.
With the bottom three dots and 2 dots on either side, form a hexagonal and draw a star shape as shown. Draw 6 such stars in the outer and a star at the centre. Draw the tails around the stars and the extra tails as drawn.For the colouring part I chose two colours and drew lines to fill the element. This Kolam goes into my favourite list 🙂
