सनातन पुस्तकालय Sanatan Cultural Library

Uttarandhra keeps the old religion of the amma goddesses with particular vigour, and its word for their festivals is sambaram — literally a celebration — used alongside the more widespread jatara. Every village, and many towns, has its presiding grama devata: Nookalamma of Anakapalle, whose month-long jatara is famous across the region; Modakondamma of the Paderu hills, whose sambaram draws the agency villages together; Polamma, Gangamma, Maridamma and many sisters besides. Tradition holds each goddess to be the settlement's own mother and guardian, responsible for rain, health and the turning-away of epidemics. Her sambaram is the moment the whole community renews that bond: the goddess is brought out among her people, every household pays its vows, and the village's scattered children are expected home. Because each goddess keeps her own calendar — fixed by custom and the elders rather than by the pan-Indian almanac — no two sambarams fall alike, and a district's festival season becomes a relay of goddesses from late winter to the monsoon.

A sambaram typically opens with the goddess invited into a ghatam, a decorated pot borne on a devotee's head, which processes through every street so that she visits each threshold. Days of celebration follow: households bring cooked offerings and new-harvest rice, women carry decorated pots in procession, and vows made in sickness or trouble are discharged at the shrine. The region's signature sound is the Tappeta Gullu, the chest-drum dance of Uttarandhra performed in the goddess's honour, alongside other folk forms through festival nights. In some villages oracular possession and the goddess's spoken counsel remain part of the rite. Animal sacrifice was historically offered at many shrines and continues in places, though numerous villages have adopted vegetarian substitutes — an ongoing shift within the tradition. The sambaram closes with the goddess's ceremonial send-off, her protection renewed. Town sambarams, such as Anakapalle's Nookalamma jatara, can run for weeks and take on the character of a great regional fair.

A sambaram belongs to the goddess's own village, and there is no counterpart event in Canada. Families from Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam settled in Ottawa keep the tie the way the tradition itself expects of those living away: contributing to the ancestral village's festival fund when a sambaram is announced, joining the ghatam procession by video call, and asking relatives to discharge household vows on their behalf — proxy fulfilment is fully accepted. When the goddess's year comes round, some families time an India visit to be present, which elders regard as a duty gladly owed. At home in Canada the observance is simple: a lamp, turmeric and kumkuma, and cooked rice offered in the goddess's name during her festival days, along with telling children whose goddess she is and which village she guards — for that knowledge is the inheritance.