This mela has attracted people of all age groups, although for different reasons. For some, it is an excuse for a family hangout. For others, it is an amusing experience to see different varieties of peanuts.
It’s raining peanuts and you will be spoilt for choice. A feast very much one of a kind on the Bull Temple Road. You can savour a rich variety of peanuts, all for a nominal price of Rs20 per kg.
“I don’t mind waiting the whole year to have peanuts, especially at the Kadlekai Parishe,” said Hithesh, a techie.
The vendors hail from different places, mostly from small towns of Tamil Nadu such as Dharmapuri, Hogenakkal, Salem and Tiruppur, and from nearby Hoskote.
This mela has attracted people of all age groups, although for different reasons. For some, it is an excuse for a family hangout. For others, it is an amusing experience to see different varieties of peanuts.
There are people who have been attending this fair for 75 years. The fair had started more than 500 years ago, but its traditional feel is still intact. The difference from the festival of yore and the current one is that in the past, people had the opportunity to view the vendors fry the peanuts, but of late they are bringing the fried ones to the venue.
Initially, this fest was exclusively about peanuts, but now vendors also sell puffed rice, chat, sugarcane juice, traditional dolls and a lot more. The peanuts here are of three types: raw, dried and fried, and directly fried.
“I become a teenager when I visit this mela every year, the only way one can grow young,” said Sudarshan a resident of Basavangudi.
“Spending time in such fairs is better than window shopping in some expensive malls,” said Arathi Nair, a student.
The Parishe symbolises the beginning of the preparation for Makar Sankranti.
The legend
It is believed that on every full moon day, a bull would charge into the peanut fields in Guttahalli, Mavalli, Dasarahalli and other places in the vicinity of Basavangudi, bringing grief to the farmers.
To prevent the animal from attacking their fields, the farmers offer prayers to the bull (Basava or Nandi) and pledged to offer their first crop to it. After Kempegowda built a bull temple on the top of a hillock in Basavangudi, the farmers in the surrounding villages started coming here to offer the annual harvest of the peanuts to Basava. Thus was born Kadlekai Parishe, which literally means peanut fair.
The three-day fair is actually one of the few remnants of traditional Bangalore, the city that is known mainly for its technological developments in the info-tech sector.
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