Navaraathiri . . . thookam Yedhu.. ohhh

If you have not seen the Kamal movie MMKR, the title won't make sense to you. My apologies.

The last week was hectic with San being out of town till Thursday. Let us say that I pretty much went into survival mode as Daddy trying to juggle work and the kids.

When it was time for a much needed rest, there come the Navarathri celebrations and they started Friday.

So the afternoon nap still eludes me.. but this year thanks to the nice lenses taking photographs of Golus(doll displays) is a lot more fun!

This is a photograph of a lamp shot with the macro.

So far we have seen nine golus over friday evening to sunday evening. Have another 6 more to visit for sure between now and next saturday.

The pictures of all the golus will have to wait till next weekend. For now, work calls...

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Navarathri 2009 - The rest of the golus..

Previous golu posts on this blog...

2009 : first set of golus

2008 : Part 1 (Golumania), Part 2(padis), Part 3(Megolumaniacs)

2007 : Golus and Paavaadais, more paavadais and golus..

2006 : Don't know and don't remember why we missed the golu scene in 2006.. we had just moved to Cupertino and things seem to have been normal. But no golu posts...

2005 : The first golu post when San was still very pregnant with the little one (ah, how time flies!), stitch shots of golus

Now for the last of this years photos.. (the little one deleted two of the photos on the iPhone by mistake)

That is all folks!

The Chronicles of Navrathria continue next year.

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Golugraphy - Navarathri Golu's 2009

Wishing one and all a very happy Navarathri Golu season, Dushera, whatever other name the next ten days go by...

Golus from Bay area friends have made it to this blog for years now. This years photos do not do justice to the magnificent displays. Most of the pics were taken on the iphone instead of the canon (it will be obvious from the photos). Here are the pics from the golus we saw this weekend...

More Golu photos next week. The kids had a great time this weekend, singing, collecting eats, meeting friends, etc..

Here's to a better tomorrow!

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The Chronicles of Navrathria - Part 3

Now that Saraswathi pooja is over, it is time to release the rest of the golu photos!

Here goes..

The smaller? golus...When you have kids in their terrible twos, the golu tends to be empty on the lower steps and they put all the fragile dolls higher up. Don't remember noticing that when we were kids.

We will now demonstrate a method to calculate the LCM (Please refresh 7th standard Math) for the golus using a factorization method. This shows that the prime factors in a golu are...

Back to more photos..

The megolumaniacs !

This one had a mini Thirupathi setup on the side and it was amazing!

When you cannot capture the size of the steps at 28mm on a Digital Rebel and you have to resort to stitching, it implies that the golu just filled the entire room!

Finally, a couple of shots of our dolls in different paavaadais!

It was definitely fun, socializing, chronicling the golus, eating sundal(s) and watching the little one say "My paavaadai fits! It fits!" after last years experience of hand me downs (hey, if you are 1+ years old and have made only one India trip, chances are you are not going to have enough Paavaadai's that fit, especially if you are short and fare in the bottom 10 percentile for height!).

Here's looking forward to next years golu..

ps. We forgot to take the camera to some golus or simply could not get pictures without people in the frame.. so your golu's have not been featured?! here. Hey, there is always next year, right?

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Veetukku Veedu - Golu Padi !!

Some golu photos with permission of the Navarathrers..

So large that they had to be covered in multiple shots and stitched to get the entire display in one photo.

What bothers me is that even still life stitch photos end up showing a "seam"..

Finally a side view of a golu padi as sold at The Home Depot (Planks are sold separately!).

These are actually "patio" steps. Did you know that this is called a "brain step". Apparently the average human being lifts his/her leg up exactly 8 inches +/- 0.0005 inches (okay, it is more like *+/-0.25 inches) to climb up steps? That is why most city codes require that when you step down from the house to the patio or when you have steps inside the house they have to be 8 inches tall!

The home depot "Padi" standardizes the "Golu Platform". Hey, did you notice that for once, I came up with a sentence that makes me sound like a software dude?!

As usual, this post ends with a promise to lobby my parents to start doing a golu in our house. It is a killer to tell the girls that we do NOT follow golu tradition, just because of a pathetic statistical correlation between great grandma keeping golu coinciding with a death in the family that same year, especially considering :

a. very large family
b. cholera and TB epidemics being widespread in those days

facts, that seriously taint that correlation.

San is worried that god forbid, we start a golu and someone dies, it will be correlated again and we will be blamed.

To hell with it, is what I say. We have two very disappointed dolls at home, pining for a doll display.

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