Onapookalam (Flower Carpet) Competition

There used to be a floral carpet competition in our school. When it was introduced in our school, it was a house level competition. The number of participant for each floral competition was 3 and all the 3 should be from same group/house. So if you win this competition, the points will be added to your house. But there can be any number of such groups from a single house. But the very next year this was changed. It was changed into a class wise competition. So each class has to have a floral carpet. we won it for 3 years consecutively. More than winning there are so many small memories which made it worth. Those days’ flowers were collected from each of our houses. We used to collect 5 INR from each student with which all the expenses for the competition were met.  The duration of competition would be 3 hours.

It would start at 9.30 AM & end at 12.30 PM. A group of boys would go and collect the flower from the shop. And another set of boys & girls would start drawing the pre selected design on the floor which is the most tedious process. And that was the most time consuming part of the competition. Those days, we used beetroots too. So they should be peeled & grated. The common flowers used were Yellow & Orange Chrysanthemum (Jamanthi), Pink Oleander (Arali), Jasmine (Mulla), Jungle geranium (Chethipoo), Globe Amaranths (Vadarmalli), Rose, Lotus & Shatavari leaves. Of these Rose & Lotus would be used just to place it in the middle as they were very expensive. Once the flowers were brought, the flowers should be separated to petals. So the remaining set of girls & boys who were left out will form into small separate groups engaging in segregation & separation of petals. There would be music playing around in the class along with the noise of discussion. There would be some having fun fights in between. Once the design on the floor is ready, and then starts the real chaos. Because, that’s when we get an idea on amount of flowers we have. It won’t go with what we had discussed on previous days. So the flower arrangement starts with all such confusions & discussions. And final part which is also equally important is the presentation which would be done last 10 minutes before the end time. It includes cleaning of classroom too after which we are supposed to get out of the classroom and floral carpet ready for valuation of judges. 

Meanwhile there used to be payasam(An Indian dessert made using rice, milk etc) distribution. Most of our students’ lunch for that day would just be that payasam. The results would be declared during the onam celebration part which happens afternoon. There would be different other competitions/cultural activities related to onam festival like tug of war, puli kali etc. And this would be on the last day of our school before onam vacation of 10 days. So it would be a kind of mixed feelings - Happiness of celebration & sadness of separation for next 10 days.