i used to fight with my mom for money to buy flowers when i was in school agriculturalist dr lakshmi aravind who lives in delhi has vowed not to buy a single flower this year for her floral carpet and only the ones grown naturally some have even grown indigenous flowers in their terraces and balconies much ahead of the festival with the pookkalam in mind if floral carpets made of commercial flowers were a luxury earlier its the turn of naadan ones now he rues with flowers from the market all one could experiment with was with the design our pookkalams have inspired many to bring back the true spirit of onam some of the nostalgic malayalis living in and outside kerala are trying to add a natural flavour in everything they do especially in the onappookkalam designer sreejith jeevan from kochi had a realisation when he happened to see a picture of a naadan pookkalam shared by his grand aunt from thrissur in their familys whatsapp group last year and now each morning people from other departments visit us to see what we have made that day says daughty john one among the researchers a naadan pookkalam he says gives him the feeling of eating homemade food after having hotel food for a long time inspired he decided to say a no to buying flowers i have also grown flowers in my terrace and balcony and have been making floral carpets right from atham day now i regret not making one with all our home grown flowers in her vegetable garden she has made sure to plant a few varieties commonly used for pookkalams such as arali chemparathy and eswara mulla during our childhood we never bought the flowers for onam it is a matter of pride for tirupurbased jeevana muralidharan to make onapookalams in her house with flowers grown in her own garden we should go back to it she sighs for kozhikode native malini mohan it is the monotony of seeing pookkalams filled with just orange yellow violet white and red flowers that made her look for locally available flowers its a pleasure for me to tell him stories about maveli and the pookkalam though i dont live in kerala i feel a sense of belonging when i create one using naadan flowers she adds that the pookkalam making process has brought joy to their lives amid the stress of research it actually connects me more with nature he says when our teacher saw it he was delighted and asked us to do it all the ten days jithya dhanesh from wayanad and smitha nair from bangalore have vowed to give their children some onam memories to cherish this time nothing to beat these nonmanicured not perfect and not so precise pookkalams they say as we were busy with our studies we could not make athapookkalam at our homes so three of us decided to create a small one in our lab on atham day with