There are festivals that arrive with great ceremony.
And then there are festivals that quietly leave little footprints all over your house.
In Madambakkam, Krishna Jayanti can begin with a woman at the doorway, carefully drawing a trail of tiny feet in rice flour while someone inside asks the most important question of the morning:
“Did you make the seedai?”
The milk packets have arrived, the newspaper has been collected, and the street is slowly waking up. Yet somewhere between the front door and the pooja room, it appears that a very small visitor has already arrived.
At least, his feet have.
There is something wonderfully charming about those little footprints. To an adult, they are part of a tradition. To a child, they are simply evidence that somebody small has walked into the house.
And once a visitor has been invited into a Chennai home, there is only one sensible thing to do.
“Feed him.”
That is when the kitchen becomes the busiest room in the house.
Seedai, murukku, aval, payasam, appam and, naturally, butter begin making their appearance. The kitchen starts the morning looking reasonably organised and ends it looking as though a small catering company has been operating without a licence.
There is also invariably someone who wanders in saying:
“Just checking.”
Nobody believes the “just”.
Recipes for these delicacies often come with no written instructions at all. They have been passed down through generations in measurements such as “a little”, “enough” and “you will know when it looks right”.
And if something goes wrong, there is always someone who knows exactly what should have been done. Usually after it is too late.
The house, meanwhile, gets its own festive makeover. Flowers appear, lamps are lit, the little Krishna is dressed up, and the doorway receives a fresh kolam.
Then comes the transformation that children take most seriously.
They become Krishna and Radha.
A little boy appears with a flute, a peacock feather and considerably less patience than the occasion requires. A little girl is dressed carefully, jewellery adjusted and hair arranged.
Then begins the photography.
“Look here.”
“Don’t move.”
“Smile.”
The child moves.
The child stops smiling.
The peacock feather falls.
The photograph is taken anyway.
Perhaps that is what makes these celebrations so delightful. The adults are trying to preserve a perfect moment; the children are busy creating a real one.
Chennai has long embraced this playful side of Krishna Jayanti, with children taking part in costume activities, music and cultural programmes. Recent celebrations have even included ‘Kutti Krishna’ contests, turning the traditional dressing-up into a community event.
But a festival does not need a stage to become memorable. Sometimes it is a child walking past the gate in costume. A neighbour arriving with a plate of homemade sweets. A plate going out and, eventually, coming back with something else in it.
The contents change. The conversation grows. And nobody seems to notice that “just dropping this off” has become a 40-minute visit.
That is one of the pleasures of a Chennai neighbourhood. Festivals have a way of turning people who merely live next door into people who know whether you have made enough seedai.
By evening, music may drift through the neighbourhood – a bhajan from a nearby home or a community gathering. Children sing, adults join in, and somebody who came only to listen for a few minutes discovers that leaving has somehow become unnecessary.
“Just for a little while” is, after all, one of Chennai’s more flexible expressions.
And then, almost unnoticed, the day begins to settle.
The flowers are no longer quite as fresh.
The kolam has acquired a few accidental footprints of its own.
The little Krishna has abandoned the flute.
The seedai has disappeared with remarkable efficiency. And the house is quiet again. Except that it isn’t quite the same house. Perhaps that is the part of the festival we notice only as we grow older!
As children, we remember the dressing up, the sweets and the excitement of seeing those tiny footprints appear on the floor.
As adults, we begin to notice the people behind the tradition – the mother who remembers the recipe, the grandmother who still knows exactly how the kolam should look, the neighbour who sends over a plate, the child who is being taught something that was once taught to us.
Traditions rarely survive because someone formally announces that they must. They survive because someone says, “Come, I’ll show you.”
And someone else watches. Years later, that person is the one drawing the footprints.
That is perhaps what those little feet really bring into a home – not simply the memory of a familiar story, but the quieter feeling of continuity.
The city changes. Houses change. Children grow up.
Even the kolams become a little more adventurous.
But someone still makes seedai.
Someone still draws those tiny feet.
Someone still tells a child to stand still for a photograph.
And someone still sends a steel container across the road saying, “Take some. There is plenty.”
There probably isn’t. There never is. But that has never stopped Chennai from sharing.
And perhaps that is the loveliest thing Krishna Jayanti leaves behind – not grandeur, but generosity; not ceremony, but connection.
We may begin by welcoming a little Krishna into the house, but somewhere along the way, we end up welcoming back pieces of our own childhood. Which may explain why, years later, we still draw those tiny feet.
Or perhaps we know that once Krishna has been invited in, Chennai’s hospitality has a strict no-return policy.
The footprints may disappear by morning. The memories, thankfully, don’t.
The seedai, however, is another matter.