Processional Wall Art

Processional — 13 museum-grade prints that set the mood. Bonalu is a Telangana folk festival honouring the goddess Mahankali, observed through the month of Ashada (July–August) and centred on the temples of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Women carry bonam — cooked rice with milk and jaggery in a decorated pot, topped with neem and a lamp — to the temple as an offering, while Pothuraju, a whip-cracking male devotee, leads the procession. Gramadevatas — village guardian goddesses such as Pochamma, Maisamma and Ellamma — are the oldest layer of Telangana folk religion, honoured with annual jataras in which the deity is carried through her own streets on a flower-decked palanquin, accompanied by drummers, kalash-bearing women, a censer and often an animal offering. Cheriyal scroll painting comes from Cheriyal village in Telangana's Siddipet district, painted by the Nakashi artist community on a signature red ground and once unrolled by travelling balladeers to narrate epics and caste legends. Ganesh Chaturthi — Vinayaka Chavithi — climaxes after ten days in nimajjanam, the immersion of the clay idol in a tank, lake or river, a tradition revived as a public festival in the late nineteenth century. In Hyderabad the giant Khairatabad Ganesha is paraded by lorry to Hussain Sagar with drummers and dancers, and a crane lowers the idol into the water.

Updated 22 Jun 2026