We did have a garden of sorts in our house and there were flowers aplenty, of almost all colours. But, during the onam festivals we had to protect them from intruders and the best way was to pluck all those flowers early in the morning or rather, much before those guys laid hands on them. This was a small affair because the most important flower was Thumba which was small and white in colour. And it took over an hour to pluck the required quantity from Thumba plants available in the vast temple compound.
Though in some parts of north Kerala Vishu was the most important festival, in view of the week long temple festival, we paid equal attention to Onam as well and we decorated the “muttam” (the front portion of the courtyard) with flowers of all colour and sizes. The Onam festival is a ten day affair and on the tenth day the elders too took part in decorating the muttam and naturally we made sure that there were all sorts of flowers.
We did everything under the watchful eye of our big brother. On one such occasion (on the eve of the most important final day), the big brother suggested, “Let it be the national flag this time”. We did have all sorts of flowers but not the green one. There were no green flowers as such, but the leaves of one rare plant served the purpose, but that plant was available only in the house of a “Thampuran” (a landlord) but it was beyond our dignity to go to that landlord’s house on the eve of the great day and when we were on the verge of abandoning the idea of a national flag one among us shouted… “Eureka! Eureka!… we can make us of the drumstick leaves” all agreed to use the dark green leaves of the drumstick tree which were available in our compound. That was how the drumstick leaves became popular during the onam festival!