Navarathri is the time to socialise and teach children traditions. It will be ten days of happily eating sundal , gawking at dolls, taking a bunch of children to different houses to collect thamboolam and singing a favourite song meditatively before the dolls seated grandly on the steps.
That is how Navarathri used to be. Now, we do not see groups of children going from one house to another. Elders make customary visits and due to lack of space and time, many housing colonies have community kolus .
“I have forgotten quite a bit. But from what I remember, there used to be lots of children visiting the kolu . The dolls used to be arranged based on stories from Ramayana, Radha Kalyanam and even Sathyavan Savithri. The hosts would tell the stories. The celebrations at S.S. Vasan’s house used to be very grand,” recalls educationist Mrs. YGP, who used to write for The Hindu in the 1950s. In her piece in August 1951 in the Women’s Corner, she listed out ideas to pep up the arrangement of dolls.
Apart from the thamboolam , in which betal leaves, nuts, flowers, turmeric and a coconut were a must, there used to be simple gifts such as dolls, kumkuma chimizh and blouse pieces.
The 2x2 blouse piece, which is a standard gift in many houses, was introduced only in 1956. Till then, silk pieces were presented to women visitors.
Industrialist Nalli Kuppuswamy Chettiar recalls how, as a child, he used to visit homes in T. Nagar along with his mother and she used to present silk blouse pieces to visitors. “We used to cover three or four houses in a day and it took us the whole week to visit all the houses. There used to be more time then and children would go around in large groups. Wedding sets, temple sets with a tank in front or a temple festival were some of the dolls to be found. There were not many dolls of people,” Mr. Kuppuswamy Chettiar recalled.
Unlike today, when a few important friends and family are invited over phone or Whatsapp, proper invitations were sent by families.
Cross-dressing comedy
Bharatanatyam dancer Padma Subrahmanyam recalls how political commentator Cho Ramaswamy visited her house dressed as a woman one year. “The invite sent to former Narada Gana Sabha secretary Krishnaswamy when he was a bachelor read as ‘Mrs. and Mr.’ and he brought home Cho as his wife. My mother was shocked when he introduced the girl and said their marriage was a hurried one,” she recalled.
“Musicians M.S. Subbulakshmi, K.V. Narayanaswamy, S. Janaki and S.P. Sailaja were frequent visitors to the kolu at our home,” Ms. Subrahmanyam recollects.
Chance to innovate
The modern kolu gives an opportunity to innovate, since the materials that are available are varied.
“Even now, children like to dress up as Andal and Krishna and learn to welcome and play host to visitors. Though I don’t have kolu at home, my mall does. This year, we have the Meru Malai made of snow. We give small pamphlets about Meru and also distribute small Merus to visitors,” said Nallammai Ramanathan, Executive Director, Abirami Mega Mall. There are homes that even give packed dinners to visitors, so that they need not cook when they return home.
For many a city dweller, the annual Kolu dolls exhibition at the Khadi Gramadyog Bhavan on Anna Salai has been a must-visit to gear up for Navarathri. It was started way back in 1967 and, last year, sales touched ₹90 lakh.
On Anna Salai Poompuhar and Victoria Technical Institute too, stock dolls are procured from artisans. The Kairali and Kaveri showrooms on the same road too have wooden and papier mache.
A resident of Adyar said that both buyers and sellers will come away satisfied at the end of the season.
Of late, the Tamil Nadu Women’s Development Corporation’s Mother Teresa Complex in Nungambakkam has become a favourite for buying SHG products to gift visitors coming home for the festival.The sale in Mylapore remains as brisk as ever. “We go there at the end of Navarathri so that we can bargain and get big sets at throwaway prices,” said S. Kamalam, a Nandanam resident.
