Trivandrum: Preparations for the ‘Mela’ to be conducted as part of the Season 5 of the Grand Kerala Shopping Festival is in full swing to entice the shoppers with their traditional fare. Eight melas will be conducted across the districts of Trivandrum, Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Thrissur, Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kannur. The Kanakakunnu Palace is the venue of the GKSF December Fest to be held in Trivandrum.

The GKSF December Fest will be held at the heart of the capital city on December 25 on Christmas morning to January 5.

Kanakakunnu is getting ready showcase different facets of the Fest. The Fest will include an exclusive segment and exhibition on traditional handicrafts of Kerala. The handloom industry has designed new programmes to elicit public participation in the design of traditional handloom products. All well-known handloom and Khadi manufacturing units will line up in the Fest. The GKSF will also include campaigns to promote the tribal-dalit-backward castes into mainstream trade and commerce.

The Mela is also aimed at giving an impetus to tribal communities and showcase their culture to visitors at the Fest. The GKSF has made arrangements to help the tribals and other traditional handicraft workers to sell their products without depending on intermediaries and middlemen. The festival will feature an ‘Adivasi Ooru’ displaying delightful authentic delicacies from tribal cuisine and other ethnic products. The ‘Adivasi Ooru’ is a recreation of an Adivasi (Tribal) settlement offering the visitors a peep into tribal life. Thatched huts, paddy fields and other scenes from the daily life of the tribal community will be a unique sight for those visiting the Decemeber Fest. Practitioners of tribal medicine will also be present offering cure to different ailments.