INTRO

Namaskaram Vanakam Vandhanam all Golu enthusiasts 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

My name is Vani Narayanasamee from Boston USA

Navarathri is the time of the year where my inner child jumps out of excitement, it takes me back to childhood memories and love the warmth that keeps me closer to my roots back in india.

Every year we take Navarathri as an opportunity to celebrate and preserve our rich culture and tradition, depict mythological stories that we carried for generations and finally end with a good message for all of us to think and act on.

We have our traditional Golu steps and our new addition this year is Andal, Rangamanmar , Mount kailash and Lord Krishna. The backdrop of srirangam vaikunda vaasal aligns with our theme this year and our whole house was decorated and looked divine with flowers, lanterns and decorative lights.

Every year we have different themes for our Golu and this year we wanted to dedicate/tribute to Bhagawan Sri Vishnu. Below are the themes

1. Vaikundam - eternal heavenly realm
2. Avatars or incarnations of Lord Vishnu
3. Paar Kadhal Kadaithal / Samudra manthan and 14 Ratnas that came out of it
4. Story of Sree Rama
5. Krishna leela
6. Dharma vs Adharma

Being in USA we don’t have resources to get dolls or other arts/crafts as we need so every year I create the things I want for myself/golu with the resources available in the USA. Also I personally feel it’s more fun/creative/effective to do things on our own rather than just buying dolls from store and displaying them.
Our Golu speciality is to cover even minute details in the display.

This year highlight was creating live effect for scenes like moving mount manadara and churning effect for paar kadal, yashoda chasing lord Krishna for stealing butter, Vastraharana of Draupadi and beautiful mandap for Srirama pattabhisekam.

Most of the dolls and crafts for these themes are handcrafted by me right from making asuras,devas,apsaras,vasuki snake,creating vaikunda,6 bala murugars ,baby lord rama with my sons play dough 🙂 , goshala for krishna leela, govardhana giri , pond with gopikas and Krishna, mount mandara made with styrofoam&paper mache, vasuki snake for paar kadal, creating Ram setu,rocks with name ram and setu samudram ocean with resin, Draupadi, Dussathanan, Lord krishna and many other dolls/props.

The efforts were from tieing panchakajam and sarees for the dolls,do their jewelry and makeup to bring them to life, the efforts and creativity were endless but I enjoyed making them with lots of love and enthusiasm.

Finally we have depicted the adharmas happening in world today and a tharasu/scale with Needhi devatha(Lady of justice) to show lord Kalki arises when the weight of adharma is more than dharma in kaliyuga.

Let’s follow the path of dharma and make this earth a better and beautiful place to live 🙏🏻

Thank you for the opportunity, hope you all enjoyed our Golu.