By Kavya S
Years ago in Kerala, people had the tradition of asking ‘athazha pattinikar undo’ which means is there anyone who hasn't had dinner or is starving without food at night. This question is asked prior to locking their house at night to sleep. When asked about the significance or the reason behind this tradition, Omana, an elderly woman who practised this tradition said, “During the olden days when people had enough wealth to live their life, at night they ask this question in order to help beggars or people starving at night without food and feed them with what they have in their home. During those times not many had the money to feed their family at least one meal. So this tradition was practised inorder to curb hunger and not to let anyone starve at night and sleep with an empty stomach. Previously wealthy families and high caste people are the ones who started this tradition”.
While talking about her experience in following this tradition she told that, throughout their times they struggled to have enough food to sustain themselves and that they didn't have enough food to follow this practise. As a result they were unable to continue this practice. Later however, when they had enough money to support their joint family and themselves, they began to adhere to this tradition. This gave them satisfaction of helping others who were starving and didn’t have the means to have food. Even though it was high caste people and wealthy families who followed this tradition, later on when people started to have enough money to sustain, they also started to follow this tradition. People nowadays are not following this tradition and are limited to movie scenes. Even though films used to show the snippets of this tradition, today’s malayalam films no longer feature such practices/traditions.
“People are now aware of such traditions only through old books and movies. It was a ritual to ask this before they close the door to their house at night. The main idea behind this is that people shouldn’t starve in that particular region/area surrounding our home. That is why we and our old generation used to ask this. We usually ask this question 3 times and in a high pitched voice so that people would hear this voice and come to us. In that way we were able to give them food from our kitchen. But it now feels like once upon a time people had this tradition to help others, but now it is no longer to be seen anywhere,” she added.
Video credits: Youtube/Speed audio video Dubai
This tradition was mentioned in a scene in the Malayalam movie called ‘Meeshamadhavan’ which was released in 2002 directed by Lal Jose. "In our home after the family prayer at night, my dad opens the front door of our house and asks this question. Even though no one comes seeking food, dad still follows this as a custom", said Mariya C Benny, a college student who grew up seeing this tradition.
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