K M Dayashankar
KARIMNAGAR, JULY 27, 2024: Students of Siddartha high schools in Karimnagar town celebrated the traditional Ashadam Bonalu festival with religious fervour and gaiety on Saturday.
The school was colourfully decorated with flowers, neem and mango leaves and the students have arrived in their best attire. The girl students with the support of their teachers decorated the bonam with neem leaves, turmeric paste, vermillion and kumkum and lamps. The boys donned the role of potharajus and danced to the traditional ‘teen maar’ beats.
The schools campus reverberated with the “Om namah shivaya and Mahankali amma ki jai” slogans and rhythmic beats. The students carrying neem leaves danced in a trance as the girl students donning the role of ‘Ammoru’ danced in a frenzied manner to the traditional folk songs of Mahankali jatara.
Besides, the potharajus role donned by the boy students was also a special attraction with their dance sequences by smearing their body with turmeric and vermillion and wearing lemons garland. The students in their traditional attire carried ‘Bonam’, a new earthen pot containing the rice cooked with turmeric, which acts as anti-biotic, and nutritional jaggery and milk and decorated with neem leaves, on their heads in a procession led by Potharajus amid drum beats.
School Chairman Dasari Sripal Reddy launched the celebrations by offering prayers to the goddesses. He explained to the students the importance of celebrating the Bonalu festival during the Ashadam month to appease the Goddesses for the wellbeing of society.
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