Photos: Tonnes of flowers wilt as UAE expats call off Onam celebrations

Kerala floods have left people with no mood to celebrate.

Flower shop proprietors have suffered heavy loss as several tonnes of fresh flowers wilted at stores across the UAE, as expats called off Onam festival celebrations in solidarity with the flood victims of Kerala. 
A total of three tonnes of flowers wilted in various branches of the popular flower shop Perumal Stores. Sudalaimuthu Perumal, owner of Perumal Stores, told Khaleej Times that he had to throw three tonnes of quality flowers to waste. 
The run up-to-the Kerala harvest festival of Onam is traditionally marked by the bustle and significant sales in flower shops. Baskets of colourful flowers such as roses, marigolds, hibiscus, tulasi, and the lantana flower are commonly found in flower shops during the Onam festival. Families, especially young children, and retailers use flowers to create an 'athapookalam', or a floral arrangement that forms a big part of Onam festivities in Kerala. 
"Flooding in large parts of Kerala have left people with no mood to celebrate. Usually, we sell up to 15 tonnes of flowers across 11 branches of our stores during Onam. This Onam we ordered six tonnes of flowers for Onam and three tonnes wilted," said Sudalaimuthu. He said several last-minute order cancellations by retailers and a meagre number of individual buyers led to the flowers wilting. 

First time in 19 years  

Perumal has been living and working in the UAE for 38-years, and has been running the flower business since 1999. 
According to the store owner, this is the first time since in 19 years that he had to throw away wilting flowers during Onam. 
"On an average day, we sell up to 1,000 kilos of flowers every day. People purchase flowers for weddings, special functions, religious events etc. The most popular flower among expats in the UAE is the jasmine flower," Sudalaimuthu added. 
Perumal Flowers are distributed at the Aweer Fruit and Vegetable market and retail outlets such as Sunrise, Talal Supermarket, KM Trading Group and a few other stores. 
"We thought individuals and families would celebrate at home. But that too was at abysmally low numbers," he added. The company imports air shipment every day from the South Indian cities of Coimbatore, Bangalore, and Madurai. 
During Onam, unique imports from Kozhikode and Kochi in Kerala are also standard. "Due to the floods this year, we transported the flowers from Madurai to Thiruvananthapuram via road and then transported them to the UAE," he said. 
Sudalaimuthu added: "It didn't help that there were rains in Kerala and Karnataka, the flowers were exposed to water and moisture, resulting in the flowers wilting earlier. The shelf-life of these flowers are not more than two days." 
Flowers at the store sold at Dh30 per kilogramme. "We made special Dh5 packages, and those were common among buyers," she added. 
Moreover, this is the first time the veteran flower salesman is suffering losses of this magnitude. "Never before have we had to throw away flowers because they wilted," he said. 
The most common Indian festivals when flowers are commonly purchased are Dusshera, Ganesh Pooja, Diwali, Tamil festival Pongal and a few other festivals. Another flower shop, The South Indian Flowers store in Sharjah, Abu Shagarah, said: "We, fortunately, cancelled all bookings 10 days ago before the Onam, and we didn't incur too many losses." 
dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com 

Dhanusha Gokulan

• dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com