The story
Bonalu Hyderabad in Hyderabad
A Telangana folk-Hindu festival honoring Goddess Mahakali and related mother-goddess forms, in which women carry decorated bonam pots of cooked rice on their heads to temples across Hyderabad, Secunderabad and other Telangana towns on Sundays through Ashada Masam, followed each week by the Rangam oracle ritual.
Bonalu traces its origin to a cholera and plague epidemic in the Hyderabad-Secunderabad region during the early nineteenth century, when soldiers of a regiment stationed in Secunderabad prayed to Goddess Mahakali for protection, and, once the outbreak subsided, offered cooked rice as thanksgiving and installed an idol that became the Ujjaini Mahankali Temple.