Let me give you a brief background about the significance of the festival. The festival is celebrated for 9 days - the first 3 days we worship Goddess Durga, second 3 days Goddess Lakshmi and the last 3 days Goddess Saraswathi.
Durga represents destroyer of evils. These 3 days as we start the festival by worshiping Her, we destroy all our inner evils
Lakshmi represents wealth. Once we have conquered our inner evils, we fill ourselves with the eternal wealth of love
Saraswathi represents Wisdom. The last 3 days we then pray for inner wisdom and get proper knowledge of the self
We read the Lalitha Sahasranamam on all 9 days for the Goddess
All these 9 days, we invite people (mostly women and girls) home for Vethala Paaku (called Haldi Kumkum in North India). This normally consists of a few betel leaves, betel nuts, turmeric and kumkum. These are the absolute necessities. We can add howmuchever we wish over this - like mehendi cones, bindis, bangles, coconuts, fruits, the offering that we made for Goddess that day and (if we want) a small gift. This year V and I gave organic soaps as gifts. Basically all things that represent Shakti (Women)
Similarly we are also invited to other's houses. So there is a lot of people visiting us and we going over to theirs - whole lot of fun
Each day of Navarathri has a color as well, which is as per the below chart
This year we had all the more fun, as most of us tried to follow this colour code - lots of pictures taken, but too many to share here. This is the time of the year when we bring out all our heavy sarees, jewellery etc. In this process V and I realised that we miss a few colours in our wardrobe. So, we are working towards filling that gap.. griinnnn
Golu is another part of Navarathri. We setup the golu in odd numbered steps (3/5/7 etc). Ours is mostly setup in 5 steps. Though there are many ready-made steps available in the market, best part is to assemble the steps with whatever furniture we have at home.
When I was a kid, my grandmother used to have a huge golu of upto 13 steps - all put together with furniture and racks available at home
Our 5 steps were made using my craft chest, 2 tables of different heights and 2 suitcases (both antiques)
A full view of our golu
The best part about setting up a golu is that it brings out all our creativity.
V setup a small park - a small waterfall using the hot glue gun, a bridge using popsicle sticks and used a black chart as the base
I tried something new as well - Rangoli in water
I have seen my grandmother do an elaborate rangoli during golu every year and have always wanted to try this out. But each time I thought of it, I would be intimidated by the idea. This year I somehow overcame that and got down to actually trying my hand at it. Though it's not a great one, it's definitely a good start and helped me get over the fear
Amidst all this, I also have a finish!!
Here's The Lotus - all done!! I simply love the way it has turned out. Again I used all materials from my stash - perforated paper and the threads. The original pattern used only one shade of pink. As I fell short of the shade, I combined 3 different shades and I love the way it has turned out
Here are the 3 shades of blue I plan to use - again using perforated paper, but a darker shade
Wow, that is quite a long post by my standards :) If you have reached this point, thanks a lot for reading through till the end
Till next time.. Take care.. Be happy.. Keep Stitching.. Au Revoir!!
