It hasn’t escaped from getting commercialised. Yet, ‘Aranmula vallasadya’ stands on its own. The mass feast, with over 60 traditional dishes served on plantain leaf and related to the Aranmula Parthasarathy Temple, has yet again kept its date with Ananthapuri. This time at the Summer Fest, a consumer expo currently on at Kanakakkunnu grounds. And the man at the helm is Vijayan Nadamangalath, one among the five authorised contractors of Aranmula vallasadya. The vallasadya is an offering to Lord Krishna, the presiding deity of Aranmula Temple. “It is offered in ‘Chingam’. Now, owing to the heavy rush, it is conducted during two months - from the end of Karkkidakom to the end of Kanni,” says Vijayan. In Aranmula, you have 53 ‘karas’ or regions and each has a ‘palliyodam’ (snakeboat). The sadya can be given to any of these regions. “They arrive in ‘palliyodam’ (with up to 110 members) and are accorded a traditional welcome at the temple before being served the feast,” Vijayan puts it in a nutshell.One has to be at Aranmula to feel the spirit of the whole affair. “For, the important part of the sadya is not the food, but the songs recited before serving a dish. Each dish on the leaf has got a song associated with it. In fact, there is a song to bring the plantain leaf even. So, when we hold the sadya at the temple, we keep one seat vacant. And the person who sits there starts asking for one item after the other,” Vijayan shares. He would ask for a ‘Kannan vazhayila’, for pure butter instead of ghee (‘Naruney nammukku venda, venna thanne kondarenam’), would demand sambar by saying ‘Vendakka vazhattiyitta sambar konduvaayo’ and ‘cheera thoran’ by reciting ‘Panchaliyude akshayapathrathile cheerathoran varatte’. “Some surprise us by asking for tender coconut water. So, we have to be prepared.” Besides the regular spread of any sadya, the specials include ‘paalathairu’, ie curd which is served in ‘paala’ or sheath drawn from arecanut tree. “In olden days, curd was made in ‘paala’,” says Vijayan. And the song related to it is, ‘Chenappadi Ramacharude kolappayin paalathairu’. “It has been found that the Aranmula temple and Chenappadi, a place near the temple, has got a special relation. So, on Ashtamirohini (the birthday of Krishna), the people from the area bring curd in ‘paala’ to the temple.” Pickle made using ‘ambazhanga’, ‘varutha erusseri’, ‘vazhuthanga mezhukkuvaratti’ (brinjal is fried in ghee. It is also a daily offering at the Aranmula temple, but is made without salt for the deity), sugarcane pieces (sugarcane is cultivated for the purpose of vallasadya) etc are some inevitable dishes of a vallasadya. At the Summer Fest, 51 dishes are being served. “Here we can’t serve dishes like ‘madantha thoran’, which is made using the tender leaves of ‘chembu’ (the song goes: ‘Chuttikettiya madantha thoranaakki konduthayo’) and ‘thakara thoran’, because it is not easy to get those items here. Back home, most of the vegetables are grown in our backyard itself,” Vijayan says. The menu has a number of fried dishes - those made using banana, colocasia, elephant yam and jackfruit, besides ‘parippuvada’, ‘unniyappam’, ‘ellunda’, ‘sharkkaravaratti’ and ‘mulagu kondattam’. “According to my father (late Gopalan Nair) there was a time when items were served on two plantain leaves. One was exclusively for the fried items,” Vijayan says. The payasam spread is tempting - adapradhaman, palpayasam, kadalapayasam, pazhampradhaman and aravanapayasam. Traditionally, the sadya would end with serving the milk offered to the deity. The sadya would be served from 11 am to 3 p.m. till the final day of the fest, ie May 31. It costs Rs 100 per head.
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