Kolu Doll Is Made To Sleep On Vijayadasami

Navarathri is over. Vijayadasami is the concluding pooja.
It is a tradition that one or two dolls which have
been in standing posture all the nine days are made
to lie down on the tier throughout night and the
next day ,kolu is dismantled in an auspicious
hour and the dolls are packed and kept back in
loft or almirahs duly protected against dermites.

Do the dolls feel tired on account of standing on
the steps all the nine days?
If they are Gods and Goddesses, omnipotent
themselves, why should they feel tired?My son aged 8
used to ask such questions which were brushed
aside calling him too talkative or adhika
prasangi.

However as all other traditions, this also should
have some significance.Though we are aware that
God has no name,form or shape it is not possible
for many of us to keep one such entity in
mind.

Mostly we started imagining God as male or female,child
or young boy or girl and wanted to see him/her
beautiful with the best attire/ ornaments. We
want to see him eat, sing, dance, play and also
sleep like us.So we want to give rest as well at
least for a day after troubling the devathas with
poojas etc all the nine days.
As dolls are compared to human beings,
metabolism of sleep also applies to them.

Sleep will be an energy conservation and rejuvenation
process in the case of dolls, considered divine.

There is another important explanation given for
this tradition.That is consecration or
kumbabhishekam.In temples, divine
energy is maximum, and it gets depleted in due
course within a period of 12 years and deities are
re energised through consecration.It is the
process
of restoring the depleted powers of the deity
and destroys the negative energies in the
surroundings.
Consecration is a live process. It is like this - if
you create food from mud , we call
this agriculture.
If you make food into flesh and
bone, we call this digestion, integration.
If you make flesh into mud, we call this cremation.
If you can make this flesh or even a stone or
a doll into a Divine possibility, that is called
consecration.

Today, modern science is telling you
that everything is the same energy manifesting itself
in a million different ways. If that is so, what you
call the Divine, what you call a stone, what you call
a man or a woman, or a kolu doll ,are all the same
energy functioning in different ways. If you have the
necessary technology, you can make the simple doll
into a Divine exuberance; The entire process
of keeping the kolu is deification and making the
doll sleep is akin to performing consecration or
rejuvenation,after 12 months, since it is a house hold where energy gets depleted soon.


The aim of human beings in this culture has been
to come near the creator on any day, in this birth
or subsequent births.It is with this awareness that
every street had three temples; because even a
few meters should not pass without there being a
consecrated space. The idea was not to create one
temple versus the other, the idea was that nobody
should walk in a space which is not consecrated; The
temple was always built first, and then houses were
built.

Evidently kolu is a form of construction of temple
and performance of consecration on the
Vijayadasami day in the
form of laying down the dolls.
Even people who are not able to keep kolu for
the first few days, keep it on the 5th day and observe
consecration on Vijayadasami day ,eager to earn
the punyam of having performed the
kumbhabhisheakam.By this process, it is said that
surroundings of the dolls-the wooden box in the loft
or almirah also get charged with divinity
and the dolls are ever ready to be placed in the kolu
for next navarathri for spreading divine vibration for
the forth coming year.

This is what I have heard from my mother 65 years back.
I think that the
questions such as whether the dolls
need rest or the omnipotent requires sleep,etc
can be answered with some conviction.

jayasala 42