Know about Bathukamma - Telangana's floral festival

Bathukamma is a colorful floral festival of Telangana. The festival has over the years become a symbol of Telangana culture and identity. Bathukamma comes during the latter half of monsoon, before the onset of winter.(Sep-Oct). It’s a unique festival where people worship the flowers and nature.

8 Days of festival begins a week before the ‘Saddula Bathukamma’ (the grand finale of the Bathukamma festival) which falls two days before Dassera. The women normally get back to their parents’ homes from their in-laws and breathe the fresh air of freedom to celebrate the colours of flowers.

Bathukamma festival celebrations on each day, beginning from Pethara Amavasya(Pethramasa) till the Saddula Bathukamma (Grand Finale of Bathukamma festival) are listed below.

1st Day - Engilipula Bathukamma

2nd Day - Atukula Bathukamma

3rd Day - Muddapappu Bathukamma

4th Day - Nanabiyyam Bathukamma

5th Day - Atla Bathukamma

6th Day - Aligina Bathukamma

7th Day - Vepakayala Bathukamma

8th Day - Vennamuddala Bathukamma

9th Day - Saddula/Chaddula Bathukamma

Bathukamma is a beautiful flower stack, arranged with different unique seasonal flowers most of them with medicinal values (gunugu and tangedu) in several concentric layers in the shape of temple gopuram. There are other flowers also used like the ‘banti’, ‘chamanti’, ‘nandi-vardhanam’ Seethajada poolu” etc

The flowers used in Bathukamma have a great quality of purifying water in ponds and tanks and flowers so immersed in abundance are environment friendly.

Preparing a Bathukamma is a folk art. Women start preparing Bathukamma from the afternoon. They cut the flowers leaving the little length base, some Gunugu flowersare diped in various vibrant colours and arrange them on a wide plate called Thambalam spread with big leaves, and stack them up in a conical mound, filling the cone with leaves and stems of the flower stalks, decorated with a Lotus or Pumpkin Flower on top of the stack along with Gouramma (a symbolic idol of Gowri made of turmeric.

After preparing Bathukamma in the evening women dresses colourfully in best of their attire and adorn lot of ornaments. The women of neighborhood also gather in a large circle around it. They start singing songs by making rounds around them repeatedly, building a beautiful human circle of unity, love, sisterhood.

After playing in circles around the ‘Batukammalu’, before the onset of dusk, the womenfolk carry them on their heads and move as a procession towards a bigger water body near the village or town.

Finally, when they reach the water pond the ‘Bathukammalu’ are slowly immersed into water after another round of playing and singing. Then they share the ‘maleeda’ (a dessert made with sugar or raw sugar and corn bread) sweets amongst the family members and neighborhood folks.

The festival heralds the beauty of nature, collective spirit of Telangana people, the indomitable spirit of womenfolk and also the ecological spirit of the agrarian people in preserving the natural resources in a festive way.