Navarathri 2023

After two years, this blog is seeing an entry for Navarathri. Last year I happened to be in India for a conference and barely made it back on Saraswathi pooja. I did get to visit a few homes in Chennai last minute to see golus! 

As most of you know, we do NOT have a golu (doll display) in our house. I am trying to figure out though if the higher powers (mom) would divine a way for me to start. Given the best years of our kids being kids are gone, maybe it is a moot point now. Hopefully my girls marry into homes that have golus!! 

Personally I think families that have no golus because they associate the festival with some past tragedy, may not be the best families to marry into. Will definitely get flamed for this, but one has to voice his opinion when it comes to correlating deaths to not celebrating festivals. The dead are dead. Festivals are for the living! In case I do conk out on some auspicious day or festival, this blog post would hopefully remind my near and dear ones to keep celebrating! Now that the rant is over.. lets move on to positive things!

Bay area golus!!!

They are a treat, as the folks here take it very seriously and do an amazing job. The only thing that beats the doll displays and the enthusiasm of the kids to do their own little side projects is the food ! There was also some singing and instrument playing in many houses and this year I sang 4 or 5 different songs on repeat mode, thanks to whatever I have learned from my carnatic music teacher from Paadarivom Padipparivom! 

A cover photo for the blog is a compilation of some of the dasavatharam sets in the golus. 

Here is a slideshow of all the beautiful full golus..

Then there are the side displays which are done by the kids for the most part with some adults taking it to a different level. The one of Ramana's ashram and the Murugan atop a custom made hill were mind blowing when seen up close!

and finally, the unique dolls that caught my eye on some of the golus! 

Given the number of images for the unique dolls, the slideshow sometimes does not load. You can browse through them at this link.

A lot of our friends are empty nesters now and it was nice to meet some of the kids who had driven or flown in for the weekend. 

Matched San's sari color for the most part. She did have some challenging colors this year.  This is now becoming a bay area trend as I see more hubbies being forced to wear matching shirts for Navarathri... Hope the men folk don't take me to some alley and beat me up for doing this every year!

Even though we have no golu, we still do Saraswathi pooja like clockwork. 

This year for a change I played Vara veena on the flute to commence the "spirit of learning"

Our little saraswathi..

This year we missed our kids who are both in college, but had fun visiting friends, catching up and eating a lot. The after effects of all those good eats caught up finally today, but if history is any guide, things will be okay in a few days! 

We really loved Navarathri this year!

My guru gave me a 15 minute music class on Vijayadasami and started teaching me Sree saraswathi Namosthuthe in raga Aarabi and I loved the new start for music learning! 

My friend and flute teacher made me play in front of friends and family to get over my self doubt, and that was equally wonderful ! 

Attended one India golu virtually. That one was twice the size of the biggest one we saw locally!

Here is to Indian festivals!

It is heartening to see good traditions surviving over time!

A big heartfelt thanks to all of you who invited me along with San, encouraged me to sing and gave us all the good eats! 

The camera comes out, after a long time!

The girls were dressed in matching colors today. This begged for a backyard photo shoot!

The matching outfits reminded me of an old series of photos that were taken years ago!

Jr. is not the same model that she was a few years ago. She either smiles by covering her face or she has what she calls "smiling my way", which I don't understand at all.

The little one loves to pose, but she is so distracted that her eyes move away from the lens to something behind me or around me in a fraction of a second. This must be the impact of being on the iPad all the time, I tell myself. After calling out her name and saying "look INTO the lens" a few dozen times, get a clean shot if lady luck shines on me.

It has been more than two months and there are two snaps of them in the camera. So we made up for it.  Once Jr. got into it she started doing funny poses for me. These days the sum total of fun in the faces of the two kids seems to be a constant. If one is happy, the other one becomes mellow and vice versa. Have not figured this out yet.. but given time, will figure out a fudge factor in that equation.

The dresses are a little on the orange shade, but the backyard light and lens has the white balance adjusted to make them show up like pink! iPhone photos show up as orange. Now I have a new challenge to work on.. understand what is going on with color balance!

Hope the trend continues and they pose for more photos. 

Bright and white..

One of the last matching dresses came out today...

This one is simple but the girls looked bright eyed and bushy tailed in them!

The little one has been very difficult to deal with the entire day. Bad cold, the infinite "nobody loves me in his house" routine, tantrums galore!

Things will turn around tomorrow or so we hope..

.

Frolicing in frocks

These days elders we visit with the kids give them cash and ask them to go buy clothes. We rounded up all the cash and got a few sets of fancy wear for the kids from a place called Cents and Pence in Adyar.

They have a decent collection!

Jr. is having a problem fitting into practically anything as she is now outside of the kids sizes! Pretty soon she will be shopping in the young adults section at Target. Don't know why she is in a rush to grow up. Wish I could slow it down a little and keep her the same Jr.

The little one seems to be okay as far as physical maturity goes, but mentally she talks like a 60 year old. She makes sure I don't miss my mother! At least she fits in clothes in the kids section..

More pictures next weekend..

Floral matches

The tailor messed up this one bigtime. Jr.'s salwars are all one size small and we could not even fit this through her neck.

Don't know how a guy can measure her and stitch something like this!

So she might be wearing this only for this photo for all we know.. poor thing did wear it for a few minutes just to pose with her sister. Cloth and stitching was a waste of almost 100$ !

So much for stitching comfortable dance suits for her in India. This is our family tailor and we have known him since he was a small boy working for his dad.

Now this is why I keep telling him "she is a growing child, make it loose.."

Next time we should also not pressure him to stitch a dozen salwars in one week..

Lesson learned!

.