Attukal Pongala: When a city cooks as one

By mid-morning on Attukal Pongala, Thiruvananthapuram no longer looks like an ordinary city.

Pavements become cooking spaces, courtyards fill with earthen pots and long stretches of road are lined with temporary brick hearths. Coconut-palm leaves are stacked for fuel, rice is washed by hand, jaggery is broken and coconut is grated as women wait for the signal that will set thousands of fires alight. They have gathered to prepare Pongala for Attukalamma, the presiding goddess of the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple, offering food with their own hands in prayer, gratitude and fulfilment of personal vows. What begins as an individual act of devotion soon becomes one of Kerala’s most remarkable collective rituals.

Women come from across Kerala and beyond to cook for the goddess, often praying for the wellbeing of their families, giving thanks for blessings received or completing a vow made earlier. Each woman tends her own pot, yet she does so among thousands of others performing the same act beside her. When the temple hearth is lit and the flames begin to spread through the surrounding streets, private prayer becomes collective worship and much of Thiruvananthapuram seems to cook as one. In 2026, Attukal Pongala was observed on Tuesday, 3 March, the ninth day of the ten-day annual festival at the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple. The festival began on 23 February and concluded on 4 March. Pongala falls on the Pooram star in the Malayalam month of Kumbham, and its name is linked to the act of boiling over. When the contents of the pot rise towards the rim, the movement that gives the ritual its name becomes visible. Once the main hearth at the temple is lit, women light their own stoves and begin preparing the offering to Attukalamma.

The goddess worshipped at Attukal is closely associated with Kannaki, the heroine of the Tamil epic Silappathikaram. Kannaki’s story of fidelity, injustice and righteous anger is woven into the festival through the Kannaki Charitam, rendered during the days leading up to Pongala. Local temple tradition also tells of the goddess appearing as a young girl near the Killi river and later indicating in a dream where a shrine should be built. Together, these stories give Attukalamma both the grandeur of an epic figure and the familiarity of a goddess rooted in a neighbourhood.

At Attukal, this devotion takes its most visible form around the hearth. The ritual begins before the first flame is lit. Devotees buy new earthen pots, collect bricks for the stove and choose ingredients for the offering. Those undertaking the vratham traditionally follow dietary discipline beforehand. On Pongala morning, women arrive carrying rice, jaggery, coconut, banana, ghee, milk, green gram, raisins and cashews, ingredients that are ordinary in Kerala kitchens but acquire a different meaning when prepared as nivedyam.

What gives the ritual particular intimacy is that the offering is prepared personally. Hands wash the rice, grate the coconut, break the jaggery, fold the leaves, shape the mandaputtu and stir the pot over the open flame. Cooking is not separate from the worship. It is part of it. The same hands that prepare everyday family meals now perform a devotional act, carrying techniques often learned from mothers and grandmothers into a public ritual shared by thousands of women. Pongala therefore preserves not only recipes but knowledge held in the hands. The hearth itself is simple. Bricks are arranged on the ground, dried coconut-palm leaves provide the fire and the earthen pot rests above the flames. Then comes the collective wait for the temple signal. When the chief priest lights the main hearth, fire begins to move from one cooking space to another until entire streets hold row after row of women tending clay pots.

Into many of those pots goes the preparation most closely associated with the day, sharkkara pongala. Raw rice is cooked until the grains soften before jaggery is added, followed by freshly grated coconut. Banana may be mashed into the mixture, while cardamom, ghee, raisins and cashews add fragrance and richness. The sweetness deepens as the liquid reduces and the rice thickens over the wood fire. When it rises to the rim and boils over, the act that gives Pongala its name becomes visible in the food itself. Not every pot tastes the same. Beside the darker sweetness of sharkkara pongala may be vella pongala or vella payasam, where rice, milk, coconut, banana or rock sugar create a paler and gentler offering. Vellachoru is plainer still, bringing together rice, coconut and banana in a softer preparation. These dishes reveal something central to Pongala cuisine. Its richness does not come from an enormous pantry, but from what generations have learned to do with rice, coconut, milk, fruit and sweetness through changes in proportion and technique.

Around the main pots, other preparations introduce completely different textures. Therali appam begins not with boiling but with folding. Rice flour is combined with jaggery, grated coconut and ripe banana, scented with cardamom and placed inside fragrant therali or vayana leaves. The parcels are folded and steamed until the rice mixture sets. As the leaves warm, their aroma passes into the appam, making the wrapping part of the flavour. A similar relationship between food and leaf appears in valsan, a southern Kerala preparation related to ela ada, where a rice-based covering encloses a coconut-jaggery filling before being folded and steamed. Modhakam brings the same broad family of rice, coconut and sweetness into dumpling form. The ingredients may echo one another, but the hands treat them differently.

One mixture is stirred over fire, another spread across a leaf and another folded around a filling.

Mandaputtu carries an even more specific meaning. Roasted green gram is powdered and combined with rice flour, jaggery, coconut and cardamom before being shaped and steamed. Some women form the mixture into rounded shapes and mark simple eyes and a nose on the surface, giving it the suggestion of a head. Traditionally associated with vows concerning ailments of the head and hair, mandaputtu shows how closely food can be tied to the intention behind an offering.

Payasam adds another layer to the cooking around Attukal. Idichupizhinja payasam takes its character from coconut milk extracted from grated coconut, producing a deep richness when combined with rice and sweetness. Aravana, also described as kadum payasam, is darker and more concentrated. Ney payasam gives ghee a stronger presence, while pal payasam relies on milk and slow cooking for its softer flavour. Not every devotee prepares every dish. Pongala allows individual vows and household traditions to exist within one larger ritual. The moment of cooking, however, is only one part of how the food is experienced. Devotees wait until the offering is complete before eating. Temple priests move through the vast Pongala area and sprinkle holy water over the prepared food, marking the nivedyam as blessed prasadam. Only then does the food that has been watched so carefully over the fire return to the people who prepared it. A spoonful of warm sharkkara pongala or a piece of therali appam is therefore eaten after hours of anticipation. From here, the cuisine widens beyond the offering pot. Across Thiruvananthapuram, annadanam and voluntary food distribution feed devotees who have spent long hours outdoors.

The savoury foods served here should not be confused with the sweet Pongala nivedyam prepared for the goddess. They belong instead to the hospitality surrounding the festival. There is no single compulsory Pongala lunch, but the food naturally draws from the vegetarian traditions of southern Kerala and from dishes that can be prepared generously and served easily. Rice, or choru, becomes the foundation of many such community meals. It may be served with avial, where vegetables such as ash gourd, raw banana, yam, drumstick and beans are cooked until tender and brought together with coconut and gentle sourness. Sambar adds lentils, vegetables and tamarind, while thoran offers a drier contrast through finely chopped vegetables cooked with grated coconut, mustard seeds and curry leaves. Other preparations bring further variety without turning the meal into an elaborate feast. Mezhukkupuratti may take raw banana, yam or long beans and cook them until tender before lightly coating them with spices and coconut oil. Erissery combines pumpkin, yam or another vegetable with pulses and coconut, while olan usually brings ash gourd and cowpeas together with coconut milk. Pulissery or moru curry introduces the cooling sourness of yoghurt or buttermilk, while small amounts of inji puli, with ginger, tamarind and jaggery, or manga achar add sharper notes to the plate.

Payar creates one of the clearest bridges between the ritual offering and the savoury food of the day. Cooked green gram is itself listed among offerings associated with the temple, but pulses also belong naturally beside rice in Kerala’s wider food culture. The same ingredients can therefore move through different settings and acquire meaning from how and why they are prepared. The savoury meal reveals a second rhythm within the festival. Food that begins as something prepared privately for the goddess later gives way to food handed freely from one person to another. A serving of rice and avial, a spoonful of payar or a ladle of sambar may appear ordinary beside thousands of smoking hearths, but together they express another part of Pongala culture: the responsibility to care for those who have gathered.

The same idea extends to what people drink. Pongala takes place under the strong March sun, and refreshments become a practical expression of hospitality. Tender coconut water may be used to break the fast gently once the nivedyam is complete, while milk and fruit may also be taken. Volunteers across the city distribute drinking water, naranga vellam or lemon water, and sarbath. Sambharam, Kerala’s lightly spiced buttermilk, is particularly suited to the day. Thinned curd is seasoned with ingredients such as ginger, green chilli, curry leaves and salt, creating a cooling drink that refreshes without becoming heavy.

By afternoon, the culinary landscape of Attukal has travelled through several stages. Rice and jaggery have boiled over into pongala, leaves have perfumed steamed appams, mandaputtu has been shaped around a vow and payasam has thickened over slow heat. The offerings are blessed and shared as prasadam, while elsewhere rice, avial and payar are served to people who may never know the names of those who cooked for them. This is what makes Attukal Pongala more than a collection of festival recipes. Food moves constantly between the personal and the collective. A woman may arrive with her own pot, her own ingredients and a prayer known only to her, yet she cooks within a city doing the same thing. One family may fold therali leaves according to a method learned from a grandmother, while another prepares payasam for a particular vow. A volunteer may spend the day serving strangers. Together, these acts create the food culture of Pongala.

Preserving that culture therefore requires more than writing down the quantities of rice, jaggery and coconut used in a recipe. Younger generations need to know why a new earthen pot is carried to the hearth, why the food is allowed to boil over, when the offering can finally be eaten, how a therali leaf is folded and why mandaputtu takes its unusual shape. They should understand that annadanam is not merely a meal for a crowd, but part of the wider spirit of hospitality that allows an enormous gathering to function through collective care.

The strongest way to carry Attukal Pongala forward is to let that knowledge continue to pass through participation. Let younger hands wash the rice, grate the coconut, arrange the bricks and fold an imperfect leaf parcel, because much of Pongala’s culinary knowledge has always travelled through the hands before it ever reached the page. Let them watch an elder judge the consistency of pongala without a measuring cup, help serve food to someone they have never met and understand why a glass of sambharam offered in the heat can belong to the festival as meaningfully as the sweet rice prepared at the hearth. If the next generation learns not only what is cooked but how, when and why it is prepared, offered and shared, Attukal Pongala will continue to carry its culinary memory forward.

The writer is Secretary, Cuisine India Society; Views presented are personal.