Golu (Bommai Kolu)

When it falls

The nine nights of Śāradīya Navarātri, pratipadā to Vijayadaśamī, in late September or October. The steps go up on the first morning and come down after the tenth.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

Golu is a household exhibition rather than a rite. An odd number of steps is built and covered in cloth, and the family’s dolls are arranged on it in an order everyone knows: gods on the top steps, saints and kings below them, then people, animals and the village at the bottom, with a park or a wedding or a cricket match laid out on the floor in front.

The oldest pair is the marapācci bommai, a man and a woman turned in redwood, given to a daughter at her marriage and added to every year afterwards. A collection is inherited, so a Golu is a family’s age made visible.

The logic of the display is the descent from the divine to the ordinary across a single flight of steps, which is why a doll of a politician or a rocket launch sits at the bottom without anyone finding it strange. Tamil Nadu calls it Bommai Kolu, Andhra Bommala Koluvu, Karnataka Gombe Habba.

How the day is kept

• A kalaśa is set on the top step on the first day, and a lamp is kept lit in front of the steps every evening.
• Women and children are invited each evening, sing something standing before the display, and leave with sundal, tāmbūlam (betel leaf, areca nut and turmeric), a small gift and often a mirror or a comb.
• A different pulse is cooked as sundal on each of the nine evenings, so nobody who visits twice is given the same thing.
• Sarasvatī Pūjā on the ninth day puts books, pens and instruments in front of the display, and nothing is read or played that day.
• On Vijayadaśamī one doll is laid on its side to put the whole display to sleep, and the dolls are wrapped and packed away for the year.

At the table

Sundal every evening, a different pulse each time — chickpea, black-eyed bean, green gram, peanut — with payasam, vaḍai and appam on the ninth and tenth days.

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