Navarathri in New Delhi

It is Navarathri time now. I cannot help but recollect the Golus organised t at my sister’s home in New Delhi in the fifties and sixties specially a couple of comic incidents . Those days, New Delhi was essentially a government city with government servants in accommodation allotted in accordance with their rank and salary Therefore, the scale and size of the Navarathri Golu in South Indian homes reflected the status of the allotted person. Each year a make –do “Golu padi” (stairs) was constructed with empty trunk boxes by placing them one above another. Problem would arise when the trunks were of the same size and shape. The big “Razaai “box, - a must in all homes to put away the woollen blankets, shawls, coats, sweaters etc. during the non- winter months, was invariably used without removing its contents. Half of its lid’s breadth would be occupied by school/college text books like Wren & Martin English Grammar , Asquith’s Geometry, Hall & Knight Higher Algebra and spiritual books like Sampoorna Ramayanam by Anantharama Dikshitar ,forming the top mantle .The differences in the thickness of the books would be adjusted by note books of 40/80 pages. The lower mantles for the golu were the small tea tables, stools and planks supported by bricks, the entire structure draped with dhobi washed dhotis/ white bed-sheets.

The dolls were arranged on the stairs depending on their age and size. My mother insisted on including in the Golu, the pair of Marapachhi (carved dolls made of a variety black wood) which she bought in Tirupati many years earlier as well as the Tanjore Bommai, a chettiar (Bania) doll which would tumble due to uneven weight distribution. As a concession to modernity she agreed to the dolls of Mahatma Gandhi, Mary with child Jesus and Ramakrishna Paramahaamsa being placed with godly Ganesh, Sri Rama and Krishna dolls. The inevitable chettiar and chettichi pair as grocer couple was made to sell fruits and vegetables like oversized big slice of cut water melon, potato, cucumber, banana, pumpkin etc.

Being a school going boy and a new learner of cycling, I was assigned the job of delivering the typewritten invites for “haldi kumkum" to the Tamil homes in the Gole Market area. The invites were for a specific day(s) during the festival when the “prasadam’ would be special like home made barfi, and the inevitable “sundal” (a dish made of boiled gram/pulse), coconut, banana, betel leaves and scented nuts. On the other days, we would have an assortment of sundials collected from Golus visited by my sister and nieces. The sundals were mostly packed in “pottalam” (newspaper parcels) It was when my sister moved to a bigger government accommodation, that a permanent structural frame made of wood was constructed. This resulted in increased number of mantles and more thematic sets of dolls like dasavadaram, south Indian marriage scene and band players. There also was the “Kai Velai” (hand work)by the side of the golu-padi, depicting a village scene, with a railway station, stationary engine and coaches, horse drawn cart, pastoral fields( real grass) and a couple of paper huts. The background landscape was a hill of clay with a strip of aluminium foil to indicate a flowing river.

The list of invitees grew bigger each year as my sister’s husband (he was also my maternal uncle) received promotions and wives of his equal status officers got added to the list. The invitations were now printed and sent by book- post. On one occasion, one invitation was returned to us by the Post Office charging double the postage. The addressee did not receive it as it was under-stamped. though she promptly attended the Golu on the fixed day. She stated that although she had refused to receive the invitation, she had made a note of the date and time in her appointment diary!

On another occasion, a couple of hours before the appointed time for the guests to arrive, the serial lamps around the Golu padi failed to light up. There was no time to send for an electrician and so my uncle and I were summoned from our offices. We went behind the white sheet cover and inside the hollow space under the Padis and started checking for any loose connection. In a serial bulb arrangement, detecting the fault means checking the joint at each and every bulb with the wire and Murphy’s Law operates i.e. it is always the last bulb checked which is loosely connected. We were half way through when a group of invitees trooped in. We were inside the frame like sitting ducks neither speaking between us nor laughing aloud at the comedy of the situation. We stayed put there for some three hours as batch after batch of ladies came, as in a relay race. Adding insult to the injury was my uncle’s senior officer who accompanied his wife, asked about my uncle and my sister said that he worked late in office those days. The senior officer smiled at my sister’s bluff as he had granted my uncle permission to leave office early that day!!

The festival ended each year with all operations in reverse order and to the relief of the menfolk.