Golu kondattam is the new fad since the past couple of years.
Our local weekly, the Adyar Times started this trend.
A team from this weekly newspaper would go visiting houses which display the navrathri dolls during this ten-day festival period and award the best kept ones with prizes and of course publish photos of the doll arrangements and the women who arranged them. There has been a competition among Adyarites to show off their best dolls since these past few years.
This year a bigger player, viz., The Hindu, in collaboration with many sponsors of prizes, have come visiting all over Chennai after short-listing applications to a sizeable 50, with great difficulty as reported in their daily newspaper.
Many families have spent good amounts on buying new dolls, selecting good themes, decorating their golus creatively with the help of all members contributing to the efforts. Many elderly ladies had a field day showing off their possesions handed down to them from their mothers and grandmothers.
The 1st prize winner was one such elderly lady who displayed dolls in three rooms and proudly said that was just a 'part' of her entire collection.
I recall those days when a certain Mrs.Rajam Murthy from Hyderabad - she is the wife of the famed Auditor (Samanda)Murthy of Murthy & Co, Hyderabad - displaying her golu. You may ask, 'So what?' All the dolls on display would be made, yes I repeat, hand 'made' by her!! What an artist. What creativity. I have yet to see anything matching her effort in this anywhere so far. She would work for a whole year except during rainy season with a theme, sculpted her works with paper pulps, plaster of paris, add fenugreek, crushed tamarind seeds to preserve them for posterity.
Each doll would involve a whole lot of process and she would sit to mould each piece and paint with so much care. Each piece would be a work of art. Mostly all her pieces would be theme based on stories from Ramayana, Mahabharata, etc.
Yet she had so much patience to be at it for many years together.
All this besides taking care of a huge joint family and her own children numbering 8.
She had the full support and patronage of her husband.
There would not be anyone who would want to miss seeing her golu in Hyderabad, whether invited or not!
She donated a hand painted screen which serves as a backdrop to this day in the festivities held during Ramanavami celebrations at Keyes Girls' High School, Secunderabad.
I rang up my cousin to get more details on Rajam maami just now before I could publish this post. Here goes some more details.
She is no more. She passed away this year at age 92. May her soul rest in peace. But her works of art live on. The family has dedicated an entire floor to exhibit her dolls of all kinds with appropriate lights in a permanant way.
I always felt I should write about this great artist and sculptor and I did, but that never got published in the earstwhile weekly called the Eves' Weekly in the
1980s.
When I requested some pictures she obliged me by coming over to hand the same to me at home. That was like an honor for me that she found time to come home.
I felt so sad that my article about her in those days din't see light.
But now I am trying to do justice by writing in my blog and dedicating it as a tribute to her immense creativity but sadly after she's no more. Better late than never. It was dasera and the golu kondattam that triggered this blog about the great artist.
By the way their house is on Basheerbagh, near Lady Hydri Club and next to a small Kali temple, if at all one is interested in seeing the range of hand made dolls on a permanant display while at Hyderabad.
Happy Dasera to all of you. May the goddess bless you to be victorious in all your endeavours.
I have the Lalitha Saharanamam to recite for tonight.
Until next.
Mahalakshmi.
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