Its Navarathri time (Nine nights in sanskrit). For those who don’t know about this festival, Navarathri Golu is a traditional display of dolls in steps. Special puja is performed for nine nights, and we invite our friends, relatives to house on this occasion.
Coming back.....My mom and I started our preparations for Golu a month before the actual festival and the most imperative, indeed the first step in the entire process is....of course HOUSE CLEANING activity.
It requires lots of motivation to clean the entire house you know!!! We started the cleaning activity with my room (supposed to be one of the messy rooms in my house, according to my mom), cleaning the wardrobe closet, cupboard, book shelves, computer table, my bed, and things I’ve kept under the cot, my veena and guitar, earring and other cosmetic accessories and the list goes on…
Welcome to my room:) We finally finished our cleaning work slowly covering all the rooms-bedrooms, hall, and kitchen. This activity itself took 2-3 weeks. I had infact taken a day off from my work to make these arrangements for Golu. The pre-Golu preparations were always onerous yet enjoyable work. Fixing the steel rods into steps and fixing the screws properly is the first but toughest job. Rest will just follow through. Arranging the background with white cloth also took considerable amount of our time. Here comes the most important activity - Taking the packed dolls from cartons and cleaning them!! I can’t believe even now-we had 3-4 big sized cartons full of dolls.
Slowly I started to uncover the cloth and paper to clean the dolls, and placed some of them in steps, some on the floor. In that 1 hour my house was fully flooded with dolls in the floor, and out of anxiety, I also broke 2 dolls :( My mom and I started to plan out for doll arrangements, which doll to be kept in which row? If row is chosen, place is not chosen! After lots of arguments and kutti sandais, me and mom decided to keep the dolls in our own way.
Now that dolls are arranged, it looked incomplete without decorations. We realised that all the decorative articles/papers were either tattered or became dirty. We decided to go for a shopping and started immediately to look for color papers and decorating papers. Searched...searched..searched...that particular day we weren't able to find what we wanted. Oru vazhiya (finally!) we got some decorations, and reached home. Appram enna...fulla decoratory work, final touch ups. Now that our Golu is in good shape, better than last year; the drama doesn’t end here. The hectic day comes when the Golu ends, and again we have wrap the dolls, dismantle the steps….
Happy Navarathri and happy sundal eating :)
It requires lots of motivation to clean the entire house you know!!! We started the cleaning activity with my room (supposed to be one of the messy rooms in my house, according to my mom), cleaning the wardrobe closet, cupboard, book shelves, computer table, my bed, and things I’ve kept under the cot, my veena and guitar, earring and other cosmetic accessories and the list goes on…
Welcome to my room:) We finally finished our cleaning work slowly covering all the rooms-bedrooms, hall, and kitchen. This activity itself took 2-3 weeks. I had infact taken a day off from my work to make these arrangements for Golu. The pre-Golu preparations were always onerous yet enjoyable work. Fixing the steel rods into steps and fixing the screws properly is the first but toughest job. Rest will just follow through. Arranging the background with white cloth also took considerable amount of our time. Here comes the most important activity - Taking the packed dolls from cartons and cleaning them!! I can’t believe even now-we had 3-4 big sized cartons full of dolls.
Slowly I started to uncover the cloth and paper to clean the dolls, and placed some of them in steps, some on the floor. In that 1 hour my house was fully flooded with dolls in the floor, and out of anxiety, I also broke 2 dolls :( My mom and I started to plan out for doll arrangements, which doll to be kept in which row? If row is chosen, place is not chosen! After lots of arguments and kutti sandais, me and mom decided to keep the dolls in our own way.
Lateral View of Navarathri Kolu 2007
Now that dolls are arranged, it looked incomplete without decorations. We realised that all the decorative articles/papers were either tattered or became dirty. We decided to go for a shopping and started immediately to look for color papers and decorating papers. Searched...searched..searched...that particular day we weren't able to find what we wanted. Oru vazhiya (finally!) we got some decorations, and reached home. Appram enna...fulla decoratory work, final touch ups. Now that our Golu is in good shape, better than last year; the drama doesn’t end here. The hectic day comes when the Golu ends, and again we have wrap the dolls, dismantle the steps….
Happy Navarathri and happy sundal eating :) 
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