An iconic cultural Bathukamma Festival celebrated by Telugu community

By Nick Attam and RV Rao

Townsville is seeing a growth in the multicultural community especially from India. We now have people from across all states of India living in the capital city of North Queensland.

This year Telugu community gathered to celebrate an iconic cultural event Bathukamma Festival at Riverside Community Center in Douglas on 6th October, 2019 evening.

Women from multicultural communities draped in colorful saris came together to offer prayers to Maa Gouri in the form of Bathukamma. Telugu community friends prepare Bathukamma’s at home and bring it to the community center to celebrate with friends and family. Before placing Bathukamma on floor we offer prayers and decorate the floor with rangoli, place Bathukamma (Gouri) along with tulsi (Lakshmi) in the center.  All the ladies stand in a circle around Bathukamma to sing songs of Gouramma and dance to the tunes.  Dancing is great fun as we dance wholeheartedly.  After the prayers, we immerse Bathukamma in water and exchange blessings in the form of Pasupu (Haldi) offered to Bathukamma and offer prasadam to all our friends.

Ladies from the Telugu community prepared Bathukamma’s at home following all the rituals. women have to fast until the Bathukamma is prepared and offered prasad before they could eat anything that day. Women sing songs while making Bathukamma and kids observe the process as it is a great entertainment for anyone to watch.

Sunitha Narayana said that she has been practicing this ritual since childhood, “My mother taught how to prepare  Bathukamma ukamma and now  I have a daughter who really enjoys practicing our culture and we will do our best to pass on inherited culture to our children. The reason for the celebration here in Townsville is to educate our cultural values to the kids and exchange them with our local community. My friends from Telugu community really enjoyed making Bathukamma at my place.”

Raghava Karnay who prepared 3 feet hight Bathukamma with a lot of effort, said: “Making this piece of art with locally available material was extremely challenging but all the efforts were paid off when the final sculpture of Bathukamma was appreciated by all our community friends, kids really liked our artificial Bathukamma . This is one of its kind in Townsville.”

Rama Venkateshwar Rao who moved here from Brisbane a couple of years ago said that ‘they like to exchange culture with other Indian communities here in Townsville, even though the Telugu community in Townsville is very small compared to Brisbane’.  Rao added, “but we really enjoy the cultural events in Townsville. Our son flew here from Brisbane to join us for Bathukamma.”

Sharada and Ashwini said: They eagerly await all year for this festival as this is one of their favorite cultural event in Townsville, “this is one of the best opportunity for us to exchange our culture with other friends here in Townsville. We really enjoy dancing and singing along with other community friends. The best part of the festival is dancing.”

Prashanthi Garu said, “ We really appreciate our friends sharing culture with other community friends, this is the first time we are participating in Bathukamma Celebrations and I really enjoyed being part of it.”

Mamatha Krishna said, “This is the best thing we could do for kids by celebrating our culture with them and practice our cultural values. My kids really love Bathukamma they dance nonstop till the end of the event.”

This year Bathukamma Celebrations were a grand success, everyone really enjoyed the festival, it is a blessing for kids that we as a community could celebrate Indian festivals here in Townsville far away from home.

The event was organized by the Townsville Telugu Group.