Ripples on the brain

First of all, Happy Navarathiri to all the readers of this blog. It starts today and continues through the Saraswati Pooja day on October 1st until the Vijayadasami day on October 2nd which the 10th and the last day of the festival. Unfortunately, this year the Saraswati Pooja day and Vijayadasami fall on national holidays, so an extra holiday is lost.

The entire period between August and January is one I look forward to. The festivals seem to just queue up one after the other. The Avani avittam marks the beginning of the festival calendar. Krishna Jayanthi, Vinayaga Chathurthi, Navarathiri/Dussera (Saraswati Poojai and Vijayadasami), Deepavali, Karthigai, festivities associated with the month of Margazhi (the music festival, thiruppavai, thiruvamppavai), Christmas, New Year and Pongal follow. Other festivals like Raksha bandan, Onam, Ramzan etc. also fall in this period. Republic day indicates the conclusion of nearly 6 months of festivals, celebrations and holidays. It is for this reason that I liked the odd semester a lot when I was doing my engineering . I was home every second week end and for festivals like Deepavali and Pongal, I stayed at home for almost a week at a stretch.

If the amount of celebration is plotted against the festivals listed in a chronological order, then you almost get a bell curve with the celebrations peaking during the Navarathiri and Deepavali period. As a festival, Navarathiri gives me the maximum satisfaction because of the preparations that go into the festivities and the duration of the festival itself. The joy starts from the time the kolu dolls are unpacked from their storage boxes and arranged in their pedestal so that they get a life of their own for the next 9 days. Once the dolls are arranged and space is allocated for the additional stuff, it always becomes a challenge to manage with the limited space in the living room. After a lull in the initial couple of days, guests start pouring in and you also visit a lot of houses. Music and sundal add to the excitement. The Saraswati poojai is the most enjoyable day for school going kids as they get break from their books. Vijayadasami marks the beginning of a lot of new things and is always exciting. The dolls are then carefully put to sleep on the night of Vijayadasami day only to be put to their places of storage again the next day to make the living room spacious all over again.

Chennai adds its own flavour to many of the existing festivals. The Ayutha Poojai, for example, falls on the day of the Saraswati Poojai. All the vehicles, equipments (at work place) are cleaned, decorated and worshipped. Most of the offices have pooja in their premises at the end of which they distribute a mixture of pori, vellam and pottu kadalai. Even on other occasions like the Kaanum Pongal, 2 days after the Pongal festival, the Vinayagar idol immersion after the chathurthi and of course the margazhi/December music season, the Chennai way of celebrating these festivals is always unique.

I read somewhere last year that a survey found January 27th to be the most depressing day in a year to the Europeans (or the British alone? I forget which) as Christmas day celebrations are almost forgotten and people look ahead to a full year of work. I don’t think it will be any different for the Indians. After January 26th, the only festivals before the annual vacation are holi which falls in March and New Year in the lunar calendars followed in each state which falls sometime in April.

Yesterday, as I tried to find the 3 idols that form the base of the kolu in my house – the ganesha, saraswati and lakshmi – I pulled out the other ones – Krishna-Radha, Vivekanda, Chettiyar-Achchi, characters of the dasavatharam etc., wrapped in all sorts of things like old mosquito nets, newspapers, appa’s veshtis, amma’s sarees, akka’s churidhars and my t-shirts, that won’t form a part of our kolu this year as my parents are abroad with my sister. The white ganesha, which was purchased during the vinayaga chathurthi festival some 10-15 years ago, impressed my father and continued to stay on (though normally they are immersed in a water body at the end of Ganesh Chathurthi) to decorate our kolu every year. Even in the years when it became logistically impossible to arrange a full-blown kolu, like this year, we make sure those 3 idols come out during Navarathiri. I look forward to visits to friends’ houses, sundal and a lot of good concerts this Navarathiri…