Onam with a german flavour

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In Germany, you simply don’t find lunch spread out on a banana leaf. Period. But then, you don’t dole out ‘kuchenrolle’ and ‘pfannkuchen’ along with ‘payasam’ for an ‘onasadya’ in Kerala, do you? The Goethe-Zentrum Trivandrum on Tuesday hosted the strangest ‘onasadya’ thus far this season with German sweetmeats adding an exotic flavour to the traditional spread. Franziska Kubald, a visiting student at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat in Jena, Germany, prepared ‘kuchenrolle’ (roll cake), ‘pfannkuchen’ (pan cake), ‘marmorkuchen’ (marble cake) and ‘schokokuchen’ (a type of chocolate cake) to add a German touch to the annual business of ‘onasadya’ and Onam celebrations. ‘’In Germany, you don’t have food on banana leaves. This is really strange,’’ said Franziska, pointing to one of the leaves, already loaded with pickles, ‘aviyal’, chips and ‘sharkkaravaratti’. ‘’The food is also really spicy,’’ she added with a giggle. Franziska found the ‘pookkalam’ laid out gloriously on the Goethe-Zentrum lawns a thing of beauty, but had a tough time identifying the blooms. ‘’This is pretty. I recognise that one in the middle. I think we have it in Germany during the summer,’’ she said, pointing excitedly. Hannes Vollrath, a cultural science student from Braunschweig, also found the festivities here thrilling, and different from the harvest festival back home. ‘’It’s not so official as it is here. This is the biggest day for Kerala, so you cannot really compare it with the German way,’’ said Hannes, who made his appearance for the festivities in a ‘mundu’, bowing to the zeitgeist. But the ‘onasadya’ held no surprises for him and Janka Tur Reich, a social science student. ‘’We’ve had it before,’’ they said in unison, cheerfully. The German-Malayali Onam celebrations held on Tuesday were intended to promote cultural relations between Kerala and Germany, Goethe-Zentrum director Syed Ibrahim said. ‘’The primary objective of the centre is to bring cultures together. Our initiative is not to just propagating German culture. So, whenever we have festivals, we try to incorporate German elements into Kerala festivals and vice versa,’’ he said.