Navratri 2009

After all those words of wisdom, its time to put them into deeds and show you my golu for this year. Due to various reasons, (irrelevant to the world at large), this time we settled for a very small simple golu and most people did not tire reminding us of that fact. Anyways, here it is. Look and judge for yourself –

We set up our golu all over the house. Starting with the entrance and the shoe rack (which are the first 2 pics) to the regular show case, crockery shelves and between our seating arangements also including lamps which add to the entire visual ambience (next 4 pics) and finally a small 3 padi golu which are in the last 3 snaps.

I love it don’t you?

Golu Ideas II

Some more funda on golu –

Another easy theme would be a zoo where you can display different animals and also some generic dolls which can be shown as visiting the zoo. One year we showcased the Olympics. An old small teddy bear was designated mascot and we displayed tracks (good old kolam strips on sawdust / mud), long jump, high jump and swimming events in which we put some water in a rectangular vessel and colored the bottom of the vessel blue to give a pool effect.

Another theme could be snapshots of the life of Krishna/Rama. Easy to do events would be Krishna stealing the butter, ‘raas leela’, ‘Geeta Upadesh’, etc.

To decorate the golu padi you can use the crepe ribbons. We had once weaved the ribbons like a mat and put it in the background. It gave the golu an extremely colorful and vibrant look. We needed a background cover since it were semi-circular padis. In the usual straight padi, background will not be required.

Tip -If you receive bouquets then save up those small pots in which they come. You can either plant something in them and keep in the border or paint them and display.

Golu Idea I

Continuing from where I left it yesterday –

Our golu usually comprised of the 5 padis and a theme which was displayed on the floor. The padis had the comparatively bigger ‘bommais’ with the usual suspects of ‘Ramar set’, ‘Chettiyar kadai’ (grocery store), few Krishnar bommais with the ‘mara pachi’ in the centre. Guess everyone is aware that ‘mara pachi’ HAVE to be kept first on the golu padi and HAVE to be the first to be removed too. Don’t know the exact logic but that is the tradition for sure. You can adorn the padi with some ‘series light’ which add glitter to your golu.

One idea for the theme could be patriotism –we traced out a map of India on thermecol. You could use the tourist / road map of India for it. You can colour the different states with different colours –Rajasthan a light brown to show desert and maybe a miniature Kutub Minar / Taj Mahal at Delhi and Agra. We had a set of dolls each of which depicted the traditional wear of a particular state. So we put them in their relevant states and added ‘Bharat Mata’ to complete our ‘Mera Bharat Mahaan’ theme.

If you are getting any wood work done now or anyone near you is then rush to the carpenter and get all the sawdust you can. Sawdust is of fantastic use in Golu. It can be used as mud in its normal form. It is easy to use and clean at the end of 10 days unlike mud which brings with it dirt, smell and some insects to boot. A simple theme could be a garden where you can have sawdust to depict the mud and people sitting around, children playing, etc. It will take minimum time and get you awesome compliments. You could add some plants and tree figures if you have. Else you can have some small plants in small cardboard boxes which will make the garden look natural. Mustard is obviously the fastest growing one. You can also try dhaniya seeds.

For the ambitious ones, you can even colour some sawdust in different colours and use it as you please. Green can be used to show grass, red can also be used to show red mud, etc. But colouring takes time. You need to soak the sawdust in the colour and then dry it out in the sun before it is ready to use. You can also use it wet in case you need to make hedges and such stuff. You do have good time for it if you start the preparation now. But if you have light coloured tiles then please be warned that the coloured sawdust (if used wet) leaves stains. In such case you can put a newspaper and then use the sawdust over it.

More ideas on the way 🙂

Golu Ideas

This post is kinda on popular demand. I find that most traffic directed to my site is looking for ‘golu padi ideas’ or ‘chennai autos’. I presume it is thanks to these posts. I don’t know what people are looking for when they search for ‘chennai autos’ but I have a fair idea of the former. So here are a few tips and ideas on golu and golu padis which may be of use to you –

I presume it must be your first golu if you are ‘googling’ for golu padis. I suggest -start small. 3 padis should be fine for your first golu or the ambitious can go for 5 padis. The easiest way we did it was to accumulate magazines and newspapers over a few months. If it is too late in the day you can always borrow them from friends and neighbors. For the 3 padi golu let the bottom most padi be your table. Arrange the newspapers in 2 rows to make a broad second padi and then the magazines on the first row of newspapers to make the top padi. You can cover these with hubby’s unused veshti (dhoti). If it is a nice one with red and green border then you have the basic decoration done for your padi at no extra effort.

If you want to go for 5 padis then, in addition to the 3 above you can add wodden trunks which are at a lesser height than your table and small wooden or plastic stools for the last padi. If the difference in the levels of any 2 padis is too much, then stack some newspapers on them and get them to your desired levels.

Golu padi is ready!

If you intend to do it religiously on a yearly basis you can get the readymade padis. I have never used them but heard they are quite good. Also you can get your carpenter to make it for you. In that case you can make it to 7 or even 9 padis. It has to obviously be dismantle-able and easy to store.

We had, after lot of effort, found a carpenter who could make a dismantle-able semi-circular padi set for us. Semi circular padis are fun. It’s different / novel/ etc. But the main consideration should be the kind of ‘bommais’ or dolls you have. In a semi-circular padi, it is tough to keep the bigger ones. One of the reasons we got it done was to camouflage our small bommais. But we have had it for about 12 years now. So you can say it’s worth the trouble.

I will put up our golu ideas of previous years. Feel free to use them if you like and do let me know how it turned out 🙂