Buoyant Floral Festival is Telangana's toast to nature
As the golden hues of the sun paled in the horizon, behind the giant monolith statue of the Buddha across the Hussain Sagar in Hyderabad on October 2, the shimmering waters lit up with lamps and candles atop flotillas of flowers that bobbed up and down like glittering necklaces. It marked the culmination of nine days of Telangana's signature flower festival - Bathukamma.
What makes Bathukamma unique is that flowers are the object of worship by women heralding the beauty of Nature in vibrant colours, particularly in the villages, during Dasara. The worship of flowers decked in a conical mound and called by some as Goddess Bathukamma is a celebratory toast to Nature.
"In Telangana, it is integral to the women's lifestyle coinciding with Dasara when women go to their parental homes, breathe the fresh air of freedom to celebrate the colours of flowers, sing the seasonal folk numbers and make the distinct flower arrangements that are placed on pumpkin creeper leaves and are finally lowered into water on Durgashtami - the eighth evening of the navarathri festival," says K.Kavitha, the TRS MP and founder president of Jagruti, a NGO, which is striving to promote the distinctive culture of Telangana.
With the TRS assuming office in June, her father and chief minister K.Chandrasekhara Rao has pulled out all stops to elevate the Bathukamma festival as the sine qua non of the cultural identity of the new state. He has accorded Bathukamma the status of a state festival of Telangana, made Dasara the longest vacation of 15 days in the course of an academic year by reducing the Sankaranti vacation to just two days and permitted women employees in government offices to go home at 2 pm for a week during the Bathukamma festivities.
What is more the state granted Rs. One crore each to all ten districts to conduct the Bathukamma festivities in such a manner that select women from all the districts gathered for the finale in Hyderabad - a large procession of thousands of women carrying the Bathukammas walking for about two kms from the Lal Bahadur Stadium to lower into the Hussain Sagar.
Bathukamma is being given the official stamp of approval by the first elected government to celebrate Telangana identity. By organising it on a large scale in Hyderabad the festivities, by bringing in a large number of women from all Telangana districts for the finale, is poised to eclipse the large cavalcade with Ganesh idols that are brought for immersion in the Hussain Sagar in what is virtually an all male affair.
Traditionally, Bathukamma is a flower festival beyond compare. For a week, in the run up to Dasara, women in the villages make small Bathukammas, play around them every evening and immerse then in a nearby pond or lake. The finale is fascinating. Men go out and gather flowers like the silver Cock's comb and the Tanners Cassia. Bagfuls are brought and the entire household sits down to make the big Bathukamma.
The flowers are arranged in circular tiers, in alternate colours, on a brass plate. There are 22 varieties of flowers including the button pom, scarlet morning glory, oleander, the tuberose and the firecracker. What are most visible and widely known are the hibiscus, chrysanthemum, jasmine and the marigold. The silver white Cock's comb flowers are coloured using water paints and Bathukamma gets colourful circular layers of them along with the Tanners Cassia in between. It is then placed in front of the deity of the home and worshipped.
Thereafter, women from different homes gather in the open, each with her Bathukamma, to form a large circle. After playing around the collection of Bathukammas, at dusk, the women carry them on their heads and go as a procession towards a bigger water lake of the village or town. Finally, all of them lower the Bathukammas into the water to make it an array of floating flower arrangements and return home with the empty brass platters on which they had carried it. Bathukamma is personalised and superior to the impressive flower displays seen during Onam which are rich decoration.
All that may be changing with the state installing brightly lit Bathukammas, some made with coloured paper flowers and fitted with tiny Chinese bulbs, in offices, including the state secretariat and even traffic islands on busy roads to give it a new spin in consonance with the TRS goal of recreating a distinct Telangana identity by fostering artistic sensibility. The government has also launched a global digital campaign with a website, Facebook page and You Tube channel to promote the festival. Kavitha says "given the manner in which Bathukamma celebrates the importance of women in society the festival will be taken to 25 countries where the Telangana diaspora is present in sizeable numbers."
It has enthused Hyderabad's wacky creator, K Sudhakar Yadav to design the Bathukamma car decked with flowers made of plastic and paper which he brought specially from Mumbai. The conical Bathukamma structure, 13.5 feet tall and 10 feet wide, was put on the engine of an autorickhsaw, provided special LED lighting and fitted with a sound system to play the Bathukamma songs as it cruises along the roads though it can run to a speed of 40 kmph.
KCR believes that Bathukamma will serve as a major tool for the renaissance of Telangana. "The state has a rich heritage of respecting human life as a unique principle and all the festivals of this region reflect the strong bond that lies between Man and Nature. These festivals, unfortunately, have not received the deserved attention in the past from the earlier governments," says the chief minister. With the unprecedented state backing Bathukamma may well surpass all other festivals in popularity at least in Telangana.