Golu ....

Its almost a week since Vijayadashami but I feel that I have to pen my fond memories of this wonderful festival of dolls which is every girl's favourite.....When we were kids me and my bro used to get very excited about keeping golu....I was excited about arranging all the bommai and my little bro used to get excited about arranging the players on the cricket set we had. He would change the positions of all of them everyday! Daily school lenthu vantha suda suda sundal kidaikum....and in the morning amma used to make some paysam or sweet.
Till I was 10 or 11, I used to be excited about inviting everybody to come for golu...I used to wear a nice pattu paavadai sattai and take a fancy kunkuma chimizh and go seeking into our colony for people to invite. Also we used to go to peek everyday at other's golu and sigh if they had an electric train set or lights or something new we did not have.....(after a few years I lost a little interest in inviting all the maamis of our neighbour hood because everywhere I went they wanted me to sing and I was (still am!!) a paatu nayana suniyam !!!). We had dolls which were almost 50 years old passed down from my patti and all kinds of 'sets' - dasa avatharam, ashtalakshmi, ramar seetai, shivan koil, kalayana set, mappilai azhaippu set, navagraham and later on even TV set - where a family is watching TV!!
Here in the US I did not even realise that golu passed quickly!! I did Saraswati poojai tho..need her belssings to get my dissertation done!! In those days, during Saraswati pooja, I would never read anything for the whole day after having kept all the books in the pujai room. And the next day I would read atleast 2 lines from every single subject I had, lest Saraswati let me slip in the one I missed!!!
Those were the innocent merry days.......(long sigh)