Celebrate Festival of Nine Nights with IndusLadies - October 2010

Nalak - thanks for sharing - your first attempt itself shows how many souls in IL can motivate many people by their wishes and regards

 

Celebrate Festival of Nine Nights with IndusLadies

Celebrate Festival of Nine Nights with IndusLadies :

Navratri is the biggest festival in our house & we set up a grand Golu & invite all our neighbours,relatives & friends .Ladies are given vetthalai & Pakku with Coconut,gifts & seepu,kannadi,sundal etc & young girls & boys/kids are given small gifts and the story of Ganesha Puranam( Theme 1 in our Golu) is explained to them in detail aswell.

We love celebrating Golu & it is a passion for us to collect the dolls,think & execute the theme,planning & time is required ,which we start doing from June itself.

We start preparing the dolls( hand made -customized) for our Theme & then we plan the set up .We eagerly wait until the Ammavasya day to execute the same & the entire family is excited on this day-busy aswell...

This year,we joined our two seven steps & made a 7 feet long 7 step (actually 14 steps) traditional Golu.Three themes were depicted :


THEME 1:

STORY FROM GANESHA PURANAM-HOW MUSHIKA BECAME THE VAHANAM OF LORD GANESHA.
Mushika Vahana Slokam is the one of the most common Slokams that everyone knows & we have explained the Slokam with a Story & the Moral.
One Slokam-Story-Meaning & Moral.

THEME 2:

UTTARAYANAM MUDHAL DHAKSHINAYANAM VARAI
We have depicted the festivals celebrated during these 2 periods of the year starting from Pongal ,Karadaiyan Nombu,Varusha Pirappu,Varalakshmi Viratham,Avani Avittam,Krishna Jayanthi,Vinayagar Chaturthi,Saraswathi pooja/Vijayadashami,Deepavali & Karthigai.

THEME 3:
Kailash & Vaikundam Dharshan

Enjoy reading ..Thanks for the time..

 

Hi All,

Herewith attaching few snaps of navarathri golu celebration at our home this year for the contest.As we are just 2 yrs old in celebrating golu we have less collections..This year the preparation started 10 days prior.

The Theme :
Theme selected was Global Village scene for this year apart from last year's dolls..started looking for tribal collections of different countries.
Shopping:
Got dolls matching our theme from mylapore and alwarpet.as giveaway gift purchased small silver coins , other regular items & fancy bags from whole sale bag shop in mylapore.
Setting up of the golu
On amavasai first the kalasam was kept...did some paintings on the kalasam and kept on a decorative plate made by me.on the golu padi we used silk saree and for the sides used a running plain material with some peacock feathers glued on it.put some decorative hangings on sides.dolls were kept in all 5 steps and for chettiyar handmade gunny bags were used to give realistic look of grocery shop.the village scene was made with sand and few wooden sticks.Had african,indian & arab tribals in it.
10days celebration
Everyday pooja was performed in the morning and naivedhyam 3times a day.different varieties of sundal and puttu were made.Different mavu kolam and rangoli were put.

On the whole it was a wonderful experience....

Malini Vijayabaskar

 

ECLECTIC SYMMETRY GOLU ::

Across 8000 miles ...
..an apartment(home) away from home ...
..6th year ...
..7 hours of set up...
..9+ days of celebration...
..25+ invitees - all together made my daughter more excited about golu than her own birthday.


I do not own any traditional "bommais" except the starter - quintessential - marapachi dolls.But still golu is one thing we look forward to through the entire year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
***My Eclectic specials[Mystery Symmetry]****: Ganesha griha , Saraswati sannidhi ,Doll dynasty ,Christmas tree , Water world , Farm , Forest ,Manjal-Kumkumam couples....
i feel honored and blessed that my golu inspired four other friends to want to start this tradition in their family and awe-inspired two american friends too .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is so much more to say.....so pls do read the captions of all my 25 pics ....here is the link to my album for all the scenes of the entire show
http://www.indusladies.com/forums/members/138886-albums2274.html


Golu bless !

 

As always, Navarathri dawned in our house this year with the usual excitement and happiness that it brings every year to our family!
This year's golu is very special and thematic with our "Krishnarin Leelaigal" and "Navarathiriyil poojai" set. The speciality of these sets are that most of the idols used for these sets are either handmade or American dolls dressed up as our traditional mythological characters! These sets are not the ready-made sets that are available at the stores in India. So a lot of care and thought has gone into preparing these sets with some hardwork in the past two weeks.
The "Krishnarin Leelaigal" set consists of 10 Leelas of Lord Krishna depicting scenes starting from his birth. The first picture shows Vasudeva carrying baby Krishna across river Yamuna, Krishna's cradle ceremony celebrated in Gokulam, Baby Krishna being fed by demoness Putana, Krishna stealing butter, Krishna tied to the ural breaking the Ashoka trees,Yashoda feeding butter to Krishna, Krishna showing the universe to Mother Yashoda after eating mud, Krishna dancing with Gopikas, Krishna-Rukmini Kalyanam and last but not the least Krishna saving Draupadi from Vastraharan.
The "Navarathiriyil Poojai" set consists of handmade Durga and Saraswathi figurines built on two Kuthuvilakkus and adorned with jewellery and other accssories.The Mahalakshmi with Kalasam in the centre given by my maternal grandmother takes a special place in our golu and in our hearts. The women sitting below the pedestal are performing pooja to the 3 divine deities revered during Navarathiri - Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswathi.

Besides the 7-step Golu which has been carefully articulated not to replicate our prior years golus, we have a modern Chettiyar and Chettichi this year who have shown all their collections from their World tour 2010. So from their usual, arisi, paruppu business they might soon open a shop with souvenirs from across the world !! We also have a hand made Rangoli depicting a peacock made out of sand available here in the US.

This year, our golu was visited by our American friends and they were awe-struck with our various Hindu mythological stories and appreciated our beautiful culture. We felt very proud to share our rich culture and tradition with them. I have attached a picture of them too besides the golu pictures.

 

Hi Ladies

I am quite excited to write about my Navrathri experience. I recently got married so this Navrathri has been the first Golu that I had to keep myself. At the time of my wedding, me & my husband were working in different states. I was earnestly praying that I should be able to get a transfer and come stay with my husband at least before Navrathri. Thankfully, it so happened that I was here before September & my husband helped me arrange the Golu. The funniest part was that though I was so much interested in keeping golu, I did not have any proper bommais(dolls). I stay in U.S. & could not get more than one baggage which hardly could fit any dolls. Moreover I was too specific on having clay dolls only. Thankfully, we found a shop around that sold a few dolls almost a3-4 days before the golu.We were able to purchase a few of them although they were little expensive & set my first golu ...yaaaaay

The toughest part was to arrange all the steps since we had limited time & resources.Not to mention all the deadlines that were queued up for the 9 nights!!<sigh>Somehow we set them up & made our first golu . I used the indusladies site to get the kizhamai kolam(a kolam specified for each day - thanks to those who posted that & the site) & decorated my golu everyday. we had more guests everyday than we expected & I remember the times when I resorted to having 3 different types of sundal on the same day since there were more ppl coming in. We had just 3 steps. The first one had a Ram, Lakshmana,sita set & a krishna idol. The second one had an ashtalakshmi set & saraswathi, The 3rd step as the most interesting one - Azhagar atril irangum set(the significance of this is also posted by someone in indusladies). Apart from this we made a small park(the plants grew so tall that they almost reached the height of the mountain nearby ) with a pond in between & animals around. Little away from this is the tirchy uchi pillayar temple On the other side you will find an airlines that also allowed rockets to be flown on demand - that was creativity you see! In fron of this we had the racing that was held in Malaysia. From Malaysia, we go to Paris to find a bowling center. On the other side, you will find an India map with all the national leaders placed in the states where they were born & ofcourse I had the marapaachi that my MIL gave for my wedding Happily I made kadalai paruppu sundal, pachai payiru sundal, kothukadalai sundal, paasi paruppu sundal( my savior for more ppl!), verkadalai sundal, mochai sundal, karamani sundal, chenna dal sundal on everyday & before Navrathri ended - there was a sweet surprise. My nephew was born on the day before Saraswathi Pooja. There were times when I felt totally stressed about the whole Navrathri thing but thanks to my husband, we had a great time

Sorry if I made the post too long - I just saw the contest & jumped in with my entry! I had th e pics taken at eh end of a tired day & after children played with some dolls - so bare with the clarity!
Thanks
Gayathri

 

Navaratri ,the festival for nine has been a favourite with for me since my childhood days,like Diwali and Krishna Jayanthi.This year I decided to keep only 3 steps,the carpenter came and set all the steps and called me.To my joy I found that he had fixed up all the 5 steps.Anyway I thought let me fill up all the steps with whatever Dolls I have.I went on a small trip to Chennai and managed to buy some Chennapatna dolls from an exhibition there.
So now was the big task of arranging dolls,I had a lovely cloth bought from India years back which would fit in the 3 steps,now what to do for 5,anyway the brand new vishti wa there,then I thought why not I use it also.Then the steps were draped.Now for the dolls.
Fifth step was all Gods,
fourth was Ramar set in between I kept Kalsa,I did not have the pot for it,in came a glass vase and the idea to fill up came from one of IL members in the golu tips 2010.I t looked nice.I must thank Nitya Kalyani.
Third step was dasavatram and with some other small dolls.
Then came second step with Chinese dolls and Chettiar and family.
First one I had nothing so I have all Ganesha idols collected at different point of time.
As Buddha is also my favourite,he is always in my Golu placed on a peetam.
Then there are few more Chinese ladies seated on a table with some sovenirs of my Europe trip.
Then there is my little park,with a Krishna temple,pond and a farm .
The rangoli idea was taken from IL.
I thank IL for allowing me to showcase what ever little talent I have.
Hope you enjoy my Navaratri snaps posted below.

 

some more photos

hello,
i thought of posting some more images of the golu at my place.
hope you enjoy it!

 

ATTAI'S awesome GOLU

This golu is my attai's-in Bangalore .
Since she( my dad's sister) is my inspiration , i am submitting her pics on behalf of her as she does not know english or emailing/attaching much.
We both do not stay in the same city/country .I have never seen her golu in person but i have seen photos .Previous years she has done - madisar( 9 yards saree ) for the villaku and last year it was RajaRajeshwari with an umbrella...
My attai is 74 years old and she celebrates navaratri every year and the best part is she thinks and plans creatively well and way ahead .Her super hit golu keynote is the decoration of the villaku and this year it is dhanalaxmi with goldcoins flowing into the uruli .
The entire set up - radha-krishna marriage , the theru (cart) procession , the temple and the park and the lotus for dhanalaxmi were all my attai's idea /creation and execution .
I decided to sumbit my attai's pics for the contest for her and her pics to inspire many of us here and all of us ,golu-lovers , for generations to come .At this age , she has the will , the interest and the creativity flowing ! God bless , Golu bless!
Hats off to her and my humble bow to her !
All of this thread's followers would sure agree with me , i believe

 

PLS note ONE OF THE STEPS with marapachi has the dolls in pairs all dressed in diff styles - all done /hand stitched by my attai !