Aadi Perukku

Festival recipes, Food, culture & lifestyle, Lunch Box Recipes, Quick Recipes, Rice dishes, South Indian Lunch recipes, Traditional recipes

Aadi Perukku is a festival of fertility & prosperity being celebrated in South India for over 500 years. The 14th century Sangam Tamil literature, Paripadal, described the celebration of this festival elaborately. It gives us a glimpse of how our ancestors celebrated this festival and also how they revered the Mother Nature in those days. It is quite enthralling to read those old verses mentioning about the rivers passing through our neighbourhood. You may read those Sangam Tamil verses here.

Aadi perukku festival:

“Women getting ready to bathe in the river urging their men to dress in festive clothing befitting the day;

Women carry incense, flowers, offerings & fire when the flood waters come to Vaigai river.”

Paripadal
aru Aadi Perukku
Aadi Perukku a few centuries ago
(Illustration Courtesy: Google)

In those days, people celebrated Aadiperukku with fun & fervor in the river basins especially in the Cauvery, Vaigai & Thamiraparani rivers. According to the Sangam Tamil literature, even the kings visited the river banks along with their men, horses & elephants and indulged in punalattam (water sports).

river-basin Aadi Perukku
Courtesy: Google

We, all Hindus, still treat the river water as the sacred water as it brings prosperity to the entire region. Earlier people viewed the swelling rivers as if the river Goddess were pregnant. So, women (particularly newly married) offer sweet & sour goodies, that are generally liked by the pregnant women, to the flooded rivers seeking the blessings of the Goddess.

adiperukku-festival-in-river-basins Aadi Perukku
Aadi Perukku today
(Courtesy: Google)

Chitrannam for Aadi Perukku:

Nowadays, we celebrate Aadi Perukku as a festival of growth & prosperity. So farmers sow their seeds and people venture into new businesses wishing prosperity. We prepare chithrannam (a platter of rice dishes with different flavors) on this day and offer them to the river Goddess by immersing them into the river.

img_0511 Aadi Perukku
Chitrannam for Aadi Perukku

Here I have prepared the traditional chithrannam consisting of sweet Pongal, tamarind rice, coconut rice, mango rice & curd rice. I served them with suitable accompaniments like a stir-fried potato with peas, paruppu vadai, appalam, vadagam & lemon pickle. We also serve a glass of buttermilk, banana, betel nut wrapped with a betel leaf (paan) as a part of our festive meal. You may also check out my other chithrannam platter here:

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Chitrannam recipes:

You may click on the links for the recipes of sakkarai pongal, puliyodharai & thayir sadam and refer to the slideshows below that are self-explanatory for the remaining recipes:

Coconut Rice

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Mango Rice

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Stir-fried potato with peas

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  1. Wow, I love all these varieties of rice, so delicious! Lovely pics Megala

  2. Wonderful I love how rich your culture and food cuisine is, that 1 banana plate consists of so many flavors keep it up Megala✋❤️

  4. So nice to read about the culture – Even though I am thamil as well, we don’t have this many celebrations in Sri Lanka. But looking back our ancestors might have done this before settling in Sri Lanka (which we don’t know when it happened)

  6. Thanx for sharing info on Aadi festival Megala, had been to Chennai a fortnite back and was actually wondering the significance of the festival 🙂

  7. Pingback: Weekly Inspirational Roundup (Volume 7) | When Women Inspire

  10. So interesting~ I’m going to include this post about the festival of fertility in my blog roundup that I publish next Friday 🙂

  15. Hi Megala. I’ve nominated you for ‘The Fabulous Chef and Cuisines Award’.Congrats.Just follow the link and you will know more-https://abhajhablog.wordpress.com/2017/08/13/the-fabulous-chef-and-cuisines-award/.Hope you like it.

  18. I didn’t cook any rice on aadi peruku..!! Just gave it a miss! Aadi Maasam is quite overwhelming.. Pooja every friday… on 18th day for aadi perukku.. We call it 18-perukku..!! Just day before yesterday we celebrated avani avittam…!! 🙂

  32. Wonderful post Megala! You have explained it in such an elaborate way about the festival.??
    The festive spread looks delicious! My favorites are mango rice and sweet Pongal.?

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