INTRO

We are excited to share our 1st Navarathri Golu with all of you. My husband and I are an engineer-scientist duo and we channeled our creativity and love for nature/science by choosing a theme based on the Sun god (Surya Narayanan) this year. As children we were told stories about the Sun god riding on a chariot drawn by 7 horses around the earth causing sunrise and sunset. The golu bommai we chose depicts Surya Narayan and his 7 horses in this form. Each horse represents one wavelength of light making up 7 colors of the rainbow. Alternatively, each horse represent one day of the week making up 7 days of the week.

Our theme is centered on showcasing 4 different roles of Surya Narayanan in our world - Gravitation (solar system - working model), Weather (water cycle - working model), Agriculture (farm and food crop) and modern Solar Architecture (Solar powered home with greenhouse and electric vehicle). We made the water cycle model from scratch and motorized the solar system model as well to make it more engaging for children and adults. The solar architecture model is made from Lego and we grew the agricultural farm ourselves from ragi millet. Check out our detailed working model and how the different roles of the sun are connected in the video!

Our main golu steps is arranged traditionally with classic bommais of gods, goddesses, kalasam and mulaipari. Notable bommais include - Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu, Ashtalakshmi and Dasavatharam set, Annamalai and Unnamalai (Arunachaleswara temple), Annapoorneshwari, Saraswati-Durga-Mahalakshmi and musical Ganesha. We included many different family traditions involved in keeping golu such as kalasam and growing mulaipari (navadhanyam sprouted and grown for Navarathri) since this is our first time and we wanted to incorporate it all. Tradition meets technology in our golu and we absolutely loved working on it as a family this year for the first time. Hope you enjoy it too :)