Pass Saroor Nagar Lake on an ordinary evening, or drive past Hussain Sagar along the traffic-heavy stretch of Tank Bund, and the water is simply part of Hyderabad’s landscape. But when Bathukamma arrives, these familiar places seem to acquire another life. Women gather carrying towering arrangements of flowers, colours spill into the evening, and folk songs rise above the bustle. For a few hours, the ordinary city recedes.
Growing up in Telangana, between Hyderabad and Warangal, makes this festival as endearing as Onam is to a Malayali or Durga Puja to a Bengali. At our apartment complex of nearly 55 flats, the festival brought women out of their homes to gather flowers and prepare for the evening’s celebrations. Many would make their way to the nearby lake, where the festivities drew larger crowds.
As children, we wore our new pattu langa and joined these older women. Some of these memories are hazy, more impressions than recollections. My family had not fully incorporated Bathukamma into our own rituals, and I grew up watching the festival without entirely understanding what it meant to those who celebrated it.
The relationship with the festival remained fleeting. We watched, celebrated the festival but rarely asked questions to understand the festivals history and its purpose. Education on this came via a friend Manasa, who grew up around Warangal and Bhongir.
Manasa recalls her grandmother’s house in Bhongir, where relatives gathered for Bathukamma. Her grandmother busied herself in the kitchen, her grandfather helped with the preparations, while Manasa and her cousins were entrusted with a task they particularly enjoyed: going around the village to collect flowers with their youngest aunt.
The hunt came with specific instructions from grandmother. Seasonal wildflowers such as tangedu (Senna auriculata) and gunugu (Celosia argentea) were essential, their yellow and feathery textures forming the foundation of the arrangement. Banti (Tagetes erecta) and chamanti (Chrysanthemum indicum) brought splashes of orange and white, while other locally available flowers like mandaram (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) and kanakambaram (Crossandra infundibuliformis) added to the collection. And if the children were lucky, they might return with a thaamaram (Nelumbo nucifera) or gummadi poolu (Cucurbita maxima).
Bathukamma arrives as the monsoon begins to recede, when the rains have replenished tanks and ponds and wildflowers bloom across Telangana’s fields and open spaces. The festival draws these seasonal gifts into the heart of community life in Telangana. Flowers that might otherwise grow unnoticed along a roadside or in uncultivated land are gathered and transformed into something extraordinary.
Back at the house, Manasa’s grandmother and the other women took over. Sitting with the flowers spread before them, they carefully arranged them in concentric layers on a brass plate called a thaambalam, building the stack upwards until it formed a tapering, temple-like shape. A symbolic representation of Gauramma, often made with turmeric, completes the arrangement.
The finished Bathukamma is intricate but ethereal, its beauty dependent on flowers that will eventually return to the water.
The kitchen was just as important as the courtyard. Each of Bathukamma’s nine days has a traditional name and customary food offering. Preparations may include atukulu (flattened rice), bellam (jaggery), putnalu (roasted gram), nuvvulu (sesame) and malida muddalu, among other offerings. The particular foods and practices can vary between families, but the rhythm remains familiar: gather, prepare, share.
Bathukamma is dedicated to the divine feminine and is celebrated during the period of Durga Navratri. The name is commonly interpreted as an invocation meaning “Mother, live” or “May the Mother Goddess come alive”. Its origins, however, are explained through several strands of folklore rather than one universally accepted account.
One popular legend tells of King Dharmangada and Queen Satyavati, who lost their hundred sons and prayed for a daughter. Their child, believed to be an incarnation of Lakshmi, was named Bathukamma — an invocation for her to live long. Other traditions associate the festival with Gauri, Parvati or Durga, including stories of the goddess awakening after a fierce battle or being called back to life by her devotees. Regional legends offer still other explanations. Together, these stories reveal how communities have understood and passed down the festival across generations.
Although Bathukamma is often described as a women’s festival, Manasa’s memories suggest something broader. Her brother Vikram pointed out that men, too, are involved throughout the celebrations. They help gather flowers for their sisters and cousins, arrange the floral stacks and set up the music.
Their role becomes particularly visible at immersion. When the Bathukammas are taken to the lake, it is often the men who carry them into the water. As Vikram explained it, this is not simply because the arrangements are heavy; even the lighter ones are handed over. Women generally remain on the shore in the practice he described, while the men take the flowers into the lake.
Bathukamma is a gathering of women, but it is not a celebration that excludes anyone.
Vikram also spoke about how the festival brings people together beyond the family. In parts of northern Telangana, beedi workers organised into kharkhaanaas, or work units, celebrate Bathukamma collectively. Each unit holds its own gathering, while Saddula Bathukamma, the final day, brings celebrations together on a larger scale. Today, women’s self-help groups also organise festivities, creating spaces for women to coordinate and sustain the tradition within their communities.
Eventually, Manasa’s family moved to Warangal, and their celebrations shifted towards Vaddepally Lake. This is where our memories begin to diverge in an interesting way.
For someone who grew up in Warangal, Vaddepally might be an everyday landmark, a place passed without much thought. During Bathukamma, however, it becomes a destination. The lake draws families and neighbours together, turning a familiar stretch of water into the centre of a much larger celebration.
Many places across Telangana undergo this transformation each year. Saroor Nagar Lake, Hussain Sagar and Vaddepally Lake are not merely backdrops for the festival. They become gathering places where the work of many hands, the songs of generations and the colours of the season converge.
The celebrations culminate in Saddula Bathukamma, also known as Pedda Bathukamma. The stacks are eventually immersed in nearby water bodies. Before immersion, the symbolic turmeric Gauramma is taken back; in some traditions, women apply the turmeric to their mangalsutra as a prayer for marital well-being.
Bathukamma has religious, ecological and social significance, and since Telangana’s formation in 2014, its recognition as the state’s official festival has made it an especially visible expression of regional identity. Yet, how each one of us perceive the festival slightly different.
Manasa for instance, remembers the people who prepared the festival; while for me its a memory of a neighbourhood, the community, coming alive around it. Neither memory is the whole story, but it takes someone else’s memories to make a familiar place look different. And sometimes, a lake one have passed by countless times becomes a space where communities, culture and memories intersect