Navaratri Kolu Celebrations

It's navaratri time and we started upon having our own kolu or golu or koluvu (Tamil, kannada & telugu respectively).

Traditionally, in South Indian families, Dussehra/Dasara is celebrated by having Kolu. A Kolu is an elaborate display of all the dolls, toys and anything & everything considered aesthtic at your home. The concept originally was to display mythological dolls. As people got more & more creative, the defintion of what constitutes kolu gradually changed. Of late, the toy sets range from representing a full fledged cricket set to Dr.Abdul kalam with his missiles. You read it right. It is Abdul Kalam the President of India himself am talking about. The most popular set for Kolu this time in Tamilnadu, happens to be the missile man amidst missiles :) The kolu starts with the begining of Navaratri and ends on the Vijayadasami the last day of Navaratri. Poojas are offered daily and offering to God made in the evening which is given to all visitors who come to see the Kolu.

Now coming to what we did...a snapshot of the arrangement is shown here.


We followed the traditions and arranged the standard Dasa avatarmas(10 incarnations of Lord Vishnu), Ashtalakshmi Idols(8 forms of goddess lakshmi), Deities as they appear in Aaru Padai Veedu( 6 famous temples of Lord karthikeyan or Murugan) and the various forms of Lord Krishna, Lord Ganesha, Shiva, Parvati.......and the list goes on & on. Zoom into the image if all this interests you...and try figure :). These dolls are indeed legacy. Most of these are what my mom-in-law has collected over years.
Now coming to the newer additions for this kolu, we converted one of the couches in our hall into a plain platform and displayed a train with a long track. Snapshot onto the right.

FYI, this train has got a steam engine and it does emit steam. There is a tree house therein. And there is a school set depicting a teacher teaching his students.

Next on display is the depiction of a traditional South Indian marriage. The famous "ammi" or the grinding stone is seen here too. The creativity of the doll makers is so visible here....

Well, there are obvious errors...the kids look like 10+years old and the teacher is teaching them alphabets. Maybe the one who made this dolls..just knew that much...so with due symapthies to them, we ignore the errors. Next to this on display is a traffic police managing traffic. The idea here is to depict the traffic using this car :D

More pics here. You can checkout a bunch of more obvious errors in those pics. There are few closeup shots out there. There is a picture of a simulated paddy field too. We simulated paddy field using ragi :) It would have been realistic if we added some more realism to the paddy field as otherwise it is looking pretty bland with no people inside and no domestic animals and such. Perhaps next time.

In all, kolu seems to be a way of expressing your creativity and ideas and have fun along. Maybe this is what religion truely is all about. Give a vent for your creativity and at the same time re-affirm your faith in God. Wow....that was a truely powerful statement coming from me, yet another brick in the wall :)

Signing off for now....