Golu galatta - part 1

Navarathri! Every time I visited people's houses during this festival, I drooled over their elaborate golu - the tiered arrangement of dolls - deities, villagers, animals. I always wished to have one in my house but didn't have the space or the dolls to pull through this feat.
After a few years of just visiting and wishing, I moved into a bigger house. Space was no longer an issue. Visiting India and buying a large number of dolls and bringing them back was a daunting task. It has proved to be more collosal than 'mere daunting'. I visit India once in 2 or 3 years. It could be any time of the yeear and not necessarily during this festival. The dolls are made and sold primarily during the weeks leading up to and a couple of weeks after this festival. Chennai ( Madras) is where one can get a good variety and a decent bargain.
So, last year a month before the actual festival I started to contact my relatives in Bangalore and Chennai to request them to procure some dolls for me. My cousin, UK and her mother-in-law came to my rescue. After receiving a postitive response from UK via email, I asked her  to buy a few sets for me. I was starting from scratch and everything was welcome. UK's mil, aunty L was so wonderful and accomodating, my first golu this year is really possible almost entirely because of her. UK and Mrs.L went around Mylapore's shopping area, which is , at the said time of the year, said to be teeming with doll sellers with many different eye catchy varieties of dolls - dasavatharam ( the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu), Ashta Laskshmi ( Eight different forms of Goddess Lakshmi), Rama Pattabhishekam ( Coronation ceremony of Lord Ram), Krishna with gopikas etc are some standard fare that have been around for generations. New themes and concepts are introduced each year. The dolls are not just of deities, there are elaborate themes like harvest festival - Pongal, farmer's market, the temple set depicting a meticuloulsy made gopuram( temple tower) with the street outside showing flower sellers, coconut vendors, auto rickshaws and so on. And then there's always Lord Ganesh who can be morphed into anything/anyone stylish and cute in keeping with the biggest news at that time. From cricketer to singer , dancing Ganesha to Yoga ganesha , he lends himself to any expression and most of us don't mind. Ganesha is as much fun as he is powerful.
Traditionally the dolls are made of clay and then painted over. The clay dolls usually have less than perfect facial features, sometimes they can be plain gross with eyes at different levels and an arm shorter than another. So, it requires very careful examination of each piece before one buys them. These days paper mache' dolls abound, they look a lot more beautiful due to very clear features and well defined brush strokes. On the flip side they don't last for generations like the clay ones. Since these dolls are in storage for prolonged periods, other than their 9 days of glory, the paper ones tend to deteriorate in a couple of years. These nuggets of wisdom came from Mrs.L too.  For these two reasons, I picked the clay ones.
On the first day UK and Mrs. L went on a sort of scouting mission, checking for inventory , prices and a general reconnaisance tour. The next day, Mrs. L cleared some shelf space in her house for these dolls and then they went and actually purchased many different sets. They stored these different boxes for 3 months until I could pay a visit to their place. We had a  fantastic 2 days with their whole family - they are really really nice people and it instantly felt like I had known them all along. Before I could leave, Mrs.L patiently and painstakingly opened the boxes for me, resorted the idols so I could carry them on train from Chennai to Bangalore. The unpacking and repacking took a lot of time and effort . Also we had to clear up a lot of hay and shredded paper that is used to cushion these dolls while packing. I thanked Mrs.L many times over, but any amount is less. Hardly anybody would do what she did for me. Until the very end when each single box went into the cars taking us to the train station, she watched over and ensured the nylon strings with which the boxes were secured, were alright.