Author: Dr. Soumy Syamchand

Abstract: Thiruvathirakali is the women-centred folklore festival of Kerala’s Nair and Namboothiri communities. This paper examines the interconnectedness of ritual, food culture, and women’s health. Drawing on interviews with traditional knowledge holders and ethnographic observation, the study maps ritual routines (bathing rites, Pathirapoochoodal, Poothiruvathira), festival performances, and the seasonal dishes prepared for Makairam and Thiruvathira days (Ettangadi, Thiruvathirapuzhuku, special drinks and snacks). Situating these practices within Kerala’s agrarian and caste-structured lifeways, the paper argues that festival foodways are both symbolic and functional: they encode social meanings, enable sanctioned transgression during carnival time, and provide nutritive and medicinal benefits tailored to the female body and seasonal exigencies. Reading Thiruvathirakali through Bakhtin’s carnivalesque highlights how temporary suspension of everyday taboos creates collective space for embodied solidarity and potential resistance, even as such freedoms remain circumscribed by broader social hierarchies. The paper concludes that Thiruvathira’s culinary rituals perform dual roles — preserving communal identity and offering pragmatic health practices — and calls for further comparative and clinical research to assess the long-term health implications of these traditional food regimes

Keywords: Thiruvathirakali, Ritual performance, Carnivalesque, Kerala women, Agrarian culture, Kerala folklore

Article Info: Received: 10 Jun 2026; Received in revised form: 07 Jul 2026; Accepted: 11 Jul 2026; Available online: 14 Jul 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.114.9