Christmas is at the doorstep and Mangalore is ready. Walk around the city and you can hear music from choirs, several shops are selling figurines for Christmas cribs and evenings are illuminated by numerous colourful stars.
Last-minute shoppers rush to buy fairy lights, flowers and stars. Ullash, owner of a shop in Hampankatta, said that the price of cribs depended on the size starting from Rs. 200. Each figurine is priced between Rs. 20 and Rs. 30 and stars are between Rs. 300 and Rs. 400 each. There are cribs available for Rs. 30,000, bought by churches.
Vinet, a customer who was examining the figurines, said she was on her third visit to the shop as she had got a new house and wanted to make a nice crib.
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She said, “Every time I get a new idea, I visit the shop for more figurines.” Nikita and Sukul, trainees at Mphasis BPO, were buying Santa caps for their colleagues. They said they would celebrate Christmas in the office on Friday because most of them were going for year-end break from Saturday.
In Milagres Church, a group of young people was busy practising carols. Alwayn D’Cunha, who was teaching them, said the group included 40 youths and children, who had been practising thrice a week.
Mr. Cunha said that there was a crib-building competition, a card-painting competition and a star-creating competition in the next few days. The group will also sing for the children in Government Wenlock Hospital next Sunday afternoon. Aster, a class 6 student of St. Theresa’s School, said she enjoyed singing, and Claudia, a parent, said there would have been more children in the choir but for the exams. Outside, in the compound, Steven said eight of his friends, all from the Milagres parish, worked through the night building the crib.
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