Wishing you all a very happy NAVARATHRI!
Welcome to our Navarathri Kolu! Duserra or Navarathri is a celebration of Goddess Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswathi. South Indians celebrate the festival with the traditional Kolu (aka Golu or Bombe Habba or Bommai Kolu or Bommala Koluvu). Dolls and statuette (of Hindu deities) are exhibited in odd numbered padis (tiers). The top most padi (tier) carries the Kalash (shown in 5th picture).
Here is a picture of Navarathri Kolu at our home in Chicago. Thanks to my naughty toddler, I end up keeping kolu in my pooja cabinet 🙂 Please scroll down to see more pictures from our kolu.
Navarathri Kolu Ideas: Kolu is all about creativity and imagination. Some prefer to just showcase figurines of various deities (like Dasavatharam, Ashtalakshmi etc). Growing up I have always enjoyed this wonderful festival. During our school days, me and my sister would make Zoo, Park with a small pond and Tirumala Hill for our kolu. Once when I was junior school, I made water fountain with empty refill of a pen! We loved decorating Marapachi Bommais (shown below) and setting up the grocery store for Mr & Mrs Chettiar! This time, I somehow managed to squeeze in Marapachi bommai in my lugguage while coming from India 🙂
Autumn has just began and we see beautiful colors everywhere. Apple picking, fall festivals and halloween “Fall” is definitely fun. Here is my navarathri kolu idea – Bringing in the fall foliage to our kolu.
Hope you enjoyed the Kolu. Now its time for thambulam.
Thambulam is goody bag that is given as a return gift (just like the b’day party goody bag). Please accept my navarathri E-THAMBULAM!
The laddu in the muffin liner is “Dates Laddu” that I made for prasadam.
Taking about thambulam I remember my aaja’s (grandpa) PJ. Once a Tanjore Maharastrian (TM) couple had invited few of their friends (Tamilians) for a feast. After the scrumptious meal, the host called hostess and said loudly “Vida dhe”, meaning give “thambulam or vida” to the guest. Vida (as we call in Tanjore Marathi) or Thambulam has beetle leaves, supari, any fruit and other gifts. The host kept on saying “Vida dhe” to his wife. The guests were confused and scared. As the host kept shouting “Vida dhe”, the guests were running away to save their lives!
The PJ here is the guests were Tamilians (from Tamil nadu) who spoke Tamil. “Vida dhe” in Tamil means “DON’T LET THEM GO“! Though the TM host wanted to give return gift to his guests, the latter assumed that the host was playing a trick to capture them 😀
We always loved our beloved aaja’s jokes and used to LOL even for his silly PJ! I Hope you enjoyed the joke too!
Share & Enjoy! -