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Folk festival showcases Telangana culture

The festival is a definite marker of identity that distinguishes them from the Telugu speaking people of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema region in the present state of Andhra Pradesh

DUBAI - Around 300 families of the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh in India gathered at Al Mamzar Park in Dubai for a native festival known as Bathukamma.

The festival, which usually falls in the months of September and October, is celebrated enthusiastically in rural Telangana. As part of the celebrations, village women gather seasonal flowers and stack them on a brass plate in conical shape. The flower arrangements are then taken to the village centre where the women dance around the flower pots and sing Telugu folk songs.

The festival, celebrated for several hundred years, is a definite marker of identity that distinguishes them from the Telugu speaking people of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema region in the present state of Andhra Pradesh.

All women and girls showed up at the celebrations at Al Mamzar park in their best traditional attires on Friday evening. They bought whatever flowers they could lay their hands on and arranged them on a plate as high as they could. One of the flower pots was as long as a metre. The bouquets glistened in the glow of lights as sea waves struck the shores of the park.

The celebrations are being organised for over six years now at the same venue, according to president of the Gulf Telangana Welfare and Cultural Association (GTWCA), Juvvadi Srinivas Rao, who is the main architect of the programme. He said the response has been growing with each passing year and has now become a must-attend event on the calendar of all Telanganites in the UAE.

Madhusudan Goud, who is a finance manager at a manufacturing company, said he and his family took time off and attended the festival for the first time. He said he was elated to find his native tradition being celebrated in a far-away land like Dubai. Goud, who has been working in this country for nearly two decades, said he would make it a point to attend the festival every year from now.

Rajitha, a housewife in Sharjah, was participating in the festival for the first time in Dubai and said she prepared for the festival right from morning. She thanked the organisers for the flawless arrangements.

Another housewife, Sreedevi, says the festival of flowers unites ladies and families of Telangana living the Gulf, while Pavani another long time resident who came all the way from Abu Dhabi, said she never missed the festival ever since it was being organised in Dubai.

Several Arab women visitors at the park got curious and joined the festivities. Some even got themselves photographed with the pot flowers.

Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) leader and member of Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly, T Harish Rao and his wife attended the festival. Enthusiastic youth literally mobbed him and wanted to know the latest updates on Telangana from the firebrand legislator. He said the formation of Telangana is a definite certainty and hoped the new year would be celebrated in the separate state. Former member of parliament Suguna Kumari and TRS leader Konda Vishweshwar Reddy were among those present.

sreenivasa@khaleejtimes.com