Navarathri 2009

One more Navarathri all done with and my first one with proper steps too! Yes, this time I bulldozed my husband into making the steps so that we didn’t have to rely on our assortment of tables, books and boxes.

So I started off searching for instructions online on how to make the steps. I know a lot of people have managed to buy the required stuff and somehow make steps that can be assembled and disassembled, but nobody unfortunately has put up proper instructions on how to do it.

So ladeej and gentleman who struggle every year with dabbas and such to make your golu steps..  idho choodungo.. the idiot’s guide to golu padikkatu..

Side view 1

Front View

Golu steps completed

Decide on the number of steps – Remember you cannot randomly change that once you buy this stuff.

1. Go to the nearest Menards, Home Depot or Lowe’s and take yourself there in a mini-van or SUV.
2. Ask for stair risers – you have different ones available depending on the number of steps you need. Those would make the 2 sides. Ours was wide enough to need a third one in the middle.
3. For the steps themselves, you could buy stair stingers (which are expensive) or you could just buy similar planks in any other kind of cheaper wood. We ended up buying 2x4x8 planks for the steps.
4. Your top step needs support – so buy it some legs – I am not sure about the dimensions but we picked some up from the clearance section and then after assembling the steps, measured and cut it to the right length.
5. Also get some deck screws – they have many options for this, but the cheapest deck screw would do.
6. Assemble as shown below – we screwed only every alternative step, the other just rested fine without any screws required.
7. Unscrew to disassemble.

During my trip to India last December, I bought a whole bunch of new dolls for the golu. I added a Lakshmi Hayagreevar statue, a couple doing the Dandia, a set of musicians playing different instruments, a wedding set, and a set of fairies (Tinker bell and friends).

Golu 2009

The placement of dolls was quite challenging. I am the kind of person, that likes things to be simple and clean. Once the five steps were built and the cloth wrapped on it, we unwrapped all the dolls – and I realized over the past few years when I had not done my golu shopping in India, I had accumulated quite a few boring and non-essential dolls. I decided I would only put up the ones that I could compartmentalize and organize with my nice ones. I am not at all a random person – and I would never be able to get myself to put a bunch of unrelated dolls together. So, my logic was let’s put all the Gods together (like they are going to give each other company or something) on the two steps, and then let’s put all the nice ones in the middle step and the miscellaneous ones in the 4th step. The last step was reserved for small items that need precision in placement and my daughter’s toys. We recently bought her a Tinker bell set of fairies and I decided to use those rather than the stuffed toys I had put up last year. For the Tinker Bell set, I had grandoise plans to repliacte Pixie Hollow, but somehow couldn’t find the time to get all of it done. We tried to grow some vegetation, but as usual we were too late to see any green before the golu started, so I had to make do with some artificial vegetation. Next year, I am definitely going to make something more creative, like a forest or a zoo or park or a carnival – we’ll see if I can keep my promise.

We also did celebarate Saraswati Pooja and Ayudha Pooja with full enthusiasm. Pictures below…

Saraswathi Pooja

Ayudha Pooja

Belated Navarathri wishes everybody and looking forward to Deepavali now!

Navarathri 2008

For all of you folks who have been asking me for the past week or so about my Navarathri Kolu – Thank you for the encouragement.

This year my Kolu grew by 2 steps, we had 5 steps in all. One was allocated to my daughter for her to keep her toys. That way she got a little involved in it, and did’nt really care about interfering with the remaining 4 steps that had the official kolu.

I didn’t send an evite this time. Instead I sent this word document as an attachment.

Invitation

Then we got down to building the steps. We used up our dining table, coffee table, and every book of reasonable size to build it. It is interesting to see how creative we get when we are forced to make 5 steps out of nothing. I also used up one saree and four of my f-i-l’s dhothis. In hindsight, I would have ironed them before putting them on. Step 1 was Dasavatharam, with a MahaVishu in between. The Mahavishnu was our new addition of the year, bought at the Aurora temple for $40. Step 2 was an assortment of all Gods that I had. Step 3 was miscellaneous dolls + my african animals. I tried to grow some vegetation for them, but I guess I overestimated the rate at which they actually sprout. So, they had to make do without any. Step 4 was Winter. I had a christmas town, and an assortment of snowglobes and other winter specific stuff. Step 5 was my daughter’s and she had a bunch of stuffed toys on them.

Kolu

Yesterday, we had about 35 people over for Kolu (the 10 others either dropped out or re-scheduled). In usual Indian style, almost everyone who was supposed to come between 4 and 8 arrived at 7:30 p.m. So, the house was full with no place to even sit down for some.

I made the usual Channa sundal and Somasi (which is a semi-circular samosa) served with Ketchup. I decided not to spend too much time and effort on Gulab Jamun – instead I took Maami‘s idea and made Badam milk. All of them turned out very well. The Somasis were worth the effort because everyone was very appreciative of it.

Navarathri Snacks

Goody bags consisted of a jewellery box, bangalore style decorative manjal kumkumam, paaku and an apple. No vethalai here – way too expensive and no use.

Goody Bags

In all, though Navarathri is not yet done, for all practical purposes it is, because almost everyone who was supposed to visit has already visited. In the process, I discovered the joy of being a mother of a daughter. For the first time, yesterday she was so excited about getting dressed up. She wore her pattu pavadai and all her jewellery and called it her “ballerina” dress, and was showing it off to everyone. That was fun. Made me wonder for the nth time, how boring it must be to have a son.

So to all you folks out there – Happy Navarathri, Dussera and Durga Puja!

Nothing much..

Hello everyone. I took off for a few weeks. You see I’ve been a busy person lately. Don’t ask me what, just sweet nothings of everyday. Plus nothing much has been happening, and my creative side has taken a walk, so I didn’t really know what to blog about. However, every now and then I make small observations as I watch TV or see someone, that makes me think – “I should blog about that”.

My husband has suddenly gotten this intense interest in the news. For one, who was only too happy to catch his news online, and just switch to a movie if I had the channel set on CNN, he has for the past week or so, been happily channel hopping between CNN and MSNBC, watching all the reactions to the bailout deal fail in Congress, the outcome of the first presidential debate, and the very entertaining gaffes by Gov. Sarah Palin. So all of these things made we want to say a few things.

I watched the bail-out deal unfold and felt for the first time, how american politicians were so similar to our own in India. They didn’t have the Bihari accent, spoke good english and weren’t dressed in dhothis and topis, but when a group of them came up to speak, it was so evident everyone there wanted to somehow be visible in that newscast. They would come out with sometimes as little informtion as “We are still working on it and hoping we will reach a deal”, but every time all 4 or 5 of them would have to add their own prefix and suffix to that same piece of news and get a few seconds of the mic for that. I also felt like there were a bunch of phrases that everyone in the media, congress and senate started using like “main street and wall street”, “golden parachute”. I wonder who actually came up with these and how they became the defacto terminology for what they described.  

Then, the debate between Obama and McCain. I was reminded of the debates I had participated in when I was in school. How our team would prepare speeches, and learn them by heart, how we tried to add sarcasm and humor, how we tried hard to make a point, how we sat there with pen in hand, to jot down every small mistake the other team made, as we mentally prepared a fierce rebuttal. Of course, the difference is we were not really arguing each other’s personal record there, but arguing about such paltry things as “Beauty Contests – Boon or Bane” and “Honesty is but a seven letter word”. However, it was sad to note that the McCain Obama debate was void of sarcasm, humor and anything that was vaguely intersting. It was so boring, that even though I had been making a mental note every evening that I should watch it on Friday evening from a week before, about half way through I decided to go ahead and start making dinner anyway.

And then.. there was Sarah Palin. Haha.. huhu.. hehe.. She made up for all of the lack of humor in the other debate. Apparently she used to be a model of some kind and won a beauty contest in her younger years, but I really didn’t think she would continue to answer all interview questions in the same way one tries to answer questions at a beauty contest. I had a colleague who was an excellent salesperson, and her advice to me when she took me along as a presales person for her sales meeting was this – “Stay in the gray, don’t commit anything”. I used to call her “Queen of Gray” after meetings where she clearly deflected many risky questions without making them feel she had deflected it. I would have to say Sarah Palin is the “queen mother of Gray”, except everyone can see right through her. I am sure all of you have seen all of those interviews she did, and how pathetic she was. I think finally here is a person who can be in the vicinity of the white house and be worse than George W Bush.

Ok ok.. everyone is thinking.. where in the world did NRI maami disappear. I will be right back next week with my round up of my Navarathri Kolu. I am expecting close to 45 people all in a day, so I am going to take a while to regain strength after that.

Be right back.. Ciao.

End of Navarathri

Yesterday was the end of yet another Navarathri. Today I packed up all the bommais in neat brown paper bags and stacked them up in a cardboard carton to be stored away for a year. I was glad to reclaim our dining table for purposes of dining at it. I am also glad there is no more sundal, no more keeping the house neat for unexpected “vethalai paakars” and no more trying to fit into old pattu podavai blouses, atleast until next year. However, I have got to say that I would miss the socializing aspect of Navarathri if we didnt go through the exercise.  My golu is poised to grow bigger next year (god willing and my daughter willing).

I am really eager to attempt something different next time. Dont ask me what – I have a year to think about it. Finished Saraswathi Poojai. We also gave our poor cars their much needed car wash and ran them over lemons. It’s a good thing Ayudha poojai does not come in winter, because I cannot imagine trying to run over lemons on snow. Next thing do is wait for Deepavali.

The Sundal effect

As Navarathri approached, the blogosphere was bombarded with Navarathri and Kolu related posts. I ran into quite a few that attacked one of my favorites – Sundal. Krish Ashok talked about a 9 day mega orgy of protein intake (also pointing to a descriptive woe of sundal consumption by ATP). I had then made up my mind on dedicating a full post to the fun and joy of consuming varieties of Sundal during Navarathri and how special it made the 9 days. However, before I could dedicate some time for that, I was myself attacked by the much described woes of sundal consumption. Duh! Who would’ve expected it – that too after a mere 3 servings of sundal.. Cha cha.. Ennakae avamaanama pochu. So that kind of killed the fun of doing the post about Sundal anyway. My first round of Kolu visitors visited last Saturday. I only tormented them slightly with one ‘saltless’ serving of sundal. Hopefully the accompanying rava kesari and bonda would’ve compensated for that. The dolls pretty much occupied every available inch of kolu padi space. I am hence forced to consider 5 steps for next year. The little tornado has been under control.. so far.. (I hope I’ve not jinxed myself). The next thing to be done is to inflict ‘The Sundal Effect’ on my next round of kolu guests expected tomorrow.

Updates to the Sundal plan

After much contemplation I decide that the best strategy was to invite everyone on both the Saturdays and make my rounds on the Sundays. I was able to get the treadmill to fold upwards thus creating some much needed space in the basement, but I would feel better if I could get rid of it for the timebeing (actually forever), but my husband thinks it’s impossible to move it even by a few inches especially since it’s on a rubber surface which makes it difficult to slide. Hmm.. Not satisfied by the answer, but since I don’t personally have the muscle for it, I will have to fit in my guests in the little space available.

I sent out the evite a few minutes ago and to my amazement, I have 44 people visiting. Coool.. not bad for an american golu in a dark cold basement.