Golu: The South Indian Way of Celebrating Navrathri

Women singing in praise of God

Children enjoy the most during this festival, as they get some holidays at this time.  They are excited thoroughly looking at the colorful dolls, getting together with friends and enjoying delicacies from various homes.

Channa Dal Sundal

The ninth day is Saraswathi Pooja, a day when books and other studies related stuffs are kept before the golu and a pooja is done to get blessings on them. ‘Sundal’ done with black chick peas is the customary offering of the day.

The tenth day is Vijayadasami, the auspicious day to venture out into things. Anything started on this day is believed to flourish. So children start schools and other extramural classes on this day. On the night of the tenth day, one or two dolls in the Golu are put to sleep after the ‘Mangala Harathi’.

The next day, the dolls are taken off, wrapped carefully in cotton fabrics or newspapers and sent back to their storeplaces, only to come back afresh for the next year.

Golu has seen a lot of transformations and innovations over the period of time. Steps built using wooden shelves and cartons are being replaced by the widely available readymade steps. New set of dolls depicting themes are prevalent in markets nowadays. Themed golus are not quite uncommon, depicting excerpts from puranas like Sri Krishna leela or Varalakshmi pooja, current topics like Kargil war or the Chadrayaan venture and social subjects like national integration or unity in diversity. 

It is amazing to note that the South Indian Golu is being celebrated in various other forms in other countries like Japan and Srilanka. In Japan, the festival is known as ‘Hina Masturi’ where miniature dolls are arranged in rows as in Golu.

Hina Masturi

Though time factor and tiring schedules force families to discard the function nowadays, most families and even Indians living abroad try to keep this age-old traditional festival of South India alive and spread the festive spirit in other countries too.