Food and festivals can not be separated .. where there is a festival or a feast there is certainly lots and lots of food and this is particularly true in India. I am so fascinated by the culture of India and this includes their cuisine.

I was fortunate enough to be given a chance to visit 2 states in South of India in 2013, and there i have experienced lots of festivities, weddings and first communions. Then there are so many Temple and Church Festivals around that people attend to and enjoy and be with other residents in the community and partake the food as a community. During Church and Temple Festivals, the residents contribute some amount of money and the organizers prepares the food for the whole community to share. Meals, starting from breakfast until dinner in most of these festivals are shared by the whole community. I was so fascinated that no matter how many people attend the festivities, food is always enough. There are also so many foods cooked to be given as an offering to the Gods in the temples where these foods are blessed and later distributed to the devotees who visit the temples.

For the church festivals, they have a procession of the statues of the saints and in these processions, the town musician called Panchari Melam are present to play the music.

The town musician's drum is called Chenda. Chenda is Kerala’s own musical instrument. It is a barrel shaped percussion gear utilized comprehensively within the state of Kerala, and Tulu Nadu of Karnataka State in India. In Tulu Nadu it is known as Chande. It has a length of two feet and a distance across of one foot. iChenda is suspended vertically from the drummers neck and with the use of two (2) sticks, the drummer strikes the top material.

Panchari Melam is a percussion ensemble performed throughout the celebrations in Kerala, India, particularly during church festivals. I have watched them performed during my first ever Church festival I attended to in Alappuzha, Kerala, India which was the Feast of Saint Joseph which is celebrated annually in March.

This article may not be all about food, but I can not talk about food of Kerala, India without talking about all the festivals around this beautiful state. These festivals are all about food, music, and sharing joy and fun with the people as a community

Below are the interesting pictures which I hope you will also enjoy as much as you enjoy all the pictures I added to the Glossary so far.