Navarathri

Yep. Navarathri season again. Back when I lived in a joint family, setting up the kolu was a big operation.  The hall had to be cleared out – meaning three heavy rosewood sofas had to be lugged into bedrooms and storerooms. The floor would be swept and mopped until the red-oxide gleamed. My cousins, my sister and I would go to the attic and get back the wooden planks that made  up the display shelves.  There were two saw toothed boards – roughly about 11 feet long, that formed the shelf sides. These would be fastened to nails on the wall – eight feet apart and then planks would be placed on each of the teeth. The result was an arrangement of 9 stair like shelves, that took up most of one side of our hall. The steps would be covered with old veshtis, and we would bring the dolls out from the cupboard they stayed the remaining three hundred fifty six days every year.

These dolls were clay, and some of them very old – some so old that even my father thinks they were around before he was born, 80 years ago. These were usually the bigger dolls – around 2 feet tall, Shiva and Parvathi, Murugan, Avvaiyar in her white sari, A beautiful bust of Krishna,  with a shining peacock feather tucked in his crown and Swami Vivekananda. There were dolls of Gypsy couples (Kuravan & Kurathi), a Gudu Gudu Paandi rattling his udukku, boom boom maattu karans  and other street people of another era. There even was a figurine of a pink faced Winston Churchill chewing a clay cigar.

The smaller dolls had the usual staples of the Indian Pantheon and myth. The Dasa Avatharam, 10 dolls arranged in chrono order; the four Shaivite saints -Appar, Sundarar, Thirugnanasambandar, Manikkavachagar; Lakshman, Ram, Sita and Hanuman, Kannappa Nayanar – poised forever with an arrow at his eye, balanced on one leg with the other leg pressed against a bleeding stone lingam and a Krishna dancing on the hood of Kalinga. There was a porcelain rendering of the last supper of Christ and a Santa Claus with  a cotton wool beard.

The last stair -  a set of wooden planks (manais) had the Chetty and the his wife the Chettichi, presiding over their grocery stall of wax fruits and real grain and spices. The Chetty  is a fat man, wearing a veshti and a towel around his shoulders. He’s got this huge smile on his face, as if he is glad to see you. His naamam shines on his forehead. His wife is much smaller and quieter, sitting at his side,  She’s smiling, and it seems its as much a smile at her husband’s flamboyance as a smile of quiet welcome. They know they are the stars of the kolu.

Every night of Navarathri, my cousin and I would accompany my mother to see the kolus at our neighbours’. Sometimes we would be asked to sing, so we would recite one of our school’s prayers - “I giri nandini” usually did the trick. In return we would get handfuls of sundal and sometimes, if we were lucky, Rasna.

I used to feel smug, because our kolu was usually bigger and better than most of our neighbours’ kolus.  Two kolus jolted this smugness, though. One was in the house on the main road with a sign that said “Balachandra Printers”. I don’t remember the family who lived there – and the house itself is long gone, replaced by a shopping complex that itself looks on the verge of demolition. Their kolu was smaller, around seven steps, but they built a forest, complete with cardboard trees, paper undergrowth and Binaca Toy fauna. It took up most of the floor and was amazing.

The other was a kolu at one of my grandfather’s friends’ house. The friend was a Malayali gentleman we knew as Kaimal Mama. Their house was huge, practically a mansion, and their kolu was an amazing 14 steps or so – larger, taller wider, more dolls, better dolls, more expensive dolls etc. If I remember right, Mrs Kaimal actually served bottled cool drinks – two tumblers of Gold Spot.

That was then. Now, the steps are gone, the planks converted to bookshelves. The kolu has shrunk – from nine steps to four.  The steps are bookcases, coffee tables, books (my Stephen King hardbacks do well here). We display  around a hundred dolls, down from the seven hundred plus, twenty five years ago. Most of the old families in the neighbourhood have long gone – to Nanganallore or Thiruvanmayur or the US. Most of our new neighbours are Gulf returnees, living in spanking new granite and marble wedding cakes, behind forbidding sheet iron gates.

Where once we would get three or four families visiting the kolu each day, we now get one in every two or three days.

My sister was on the phone this morning. Bitterly disappointed with the way her kids were behaving. Navaratri was her favourite festival. She was the one who drive all of us into getting the stairs and setting up the kolu. Now, neither of her kids showed any enthusiasm for it.  It was a chore, to be done as quickly as possible, so that they could go back to their iPods and PSPs. They have stubbornly refused to go visiting, and have just stopped short of heaping scorn on the entire exercise.

Times are changing. And while this piece may sound like the usual longing for “the good old days”, I can’t lose sight of the fact that those days were often anything but good. It’s not hard to figure out that your younger self was usually quite a dick. So I wonder.  I would like to see my nieces making my sister proud wearing their pattu pavadais and singing for neighbours and relatives. But I also get how it would be crashingly boring compared to mall hopping with your friends or attending an online party at stardoll or playing Jak and Daxter and Civilization V. Hell, given a chance, I would choose Civ V over relatives any day.

I know that the kolu at home will stop soon – when I am the last one standing, the dolls will just gather dust behind the dirty glass front of the almirah. My sister may grieve a little, but that’s about it.