Snake boat race of Kerala, India, recreated in Cow Meadow Park in Freeport

Twelve members of the Bharath Boat Club paddled their slim wooden craft in unison, timing each stroke to the beat of a drum, racing toward the finish line on Freeport Creek. The race was part of the Onam festival, celebrated every fall in the southern Indian state of Kerala and for the first time also celebrated in Cow Meadow Park in Freeport on Sunday.

“This is an important cultural festival in our home state,” said Chinnu Martin, 36, of Levittown, who emigrated from Kerala 10 years ago and attended with six other family members. “We used to enjoy it back home, and this is a chance to enjoy it here. It’s a nostalgic moment for us.”

The event was sponsored by the American Malayali Heritage Foundation, which supports Long Island’s Keralite expat community, as well as Sen. Kevin Thomas (D-Levittown), whose family roots are in Kerala and is the first South Asian elected to the State Senate, and Freeport’s mayor, Robert Kennedy. The organizers plan to make Nassau County’s first Onam festival an annual September event.

Onam commemorates the return of Mahabali, the benevolent king of the Daitya people in Hindu mythology. According to legend, the king had been banished to the underworld but was granted his wish of returning once a year to visit his people.

In Kerala, the celebration is a 10-day affair; Long Island had to make do with just one day. Nevertheless, the organizers managed to pack most of the traditional Onam activities into one afternoon.

Early in the afternoon, the crowds clustered along the small beach at the park to watch the vallam kali, known as snake boat race in English. The authentic snake boats of South India are very long, accommodating more than 100 paddlers. An Onam festival race might feature as many as 40 boats, each representing a different village, explained John George, 48, who grew up in Kerala and now lives in New Hyde Park.

The boats racing on Sunday were significantly smaller: There were 12 paddlers, one crew member who steers and one who keeps time with the drum. The smaller boats are “the closest we can get without getting them from India,” Sen. Thomas said.

Cherry Varghese, 62, a member of the Bharath Boat Club, participated in the vallam kali “early in childhood back in Kerala.” He now lives in New Hyde Park. Like Varghese, most of the members of the club learned to paddle these delicate-looking vessels half a world away, and now enjoy the sport in their new home country.

The club has raced in Canada and across the United States, from Chicago to Florida, and won championships in the races at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens in 2015 and 2023.

The Onam festival also featured Thiruvathira dance, a traditional art form performed by women and believed to bring good luck (especially in marriage), and Chenda drumming, performed on a cylindrical drum made of wood and cowhide and played with two slightly curved sticks.

Later in the day, under a large white tent, the celebrants enjoyed the traditional Onam Sadhya feast: an all-vegetarian meal, flavored with the complex spices typical of South Indian cuisine, and served on banana leaves. But the most distinctive element of the cooking from Kerala, said Daisy Palliparambil, the president of the American Malayali Heritage Foundation, is “the love that goes into making it.”