Olympiad, Nambi, rhombus golupadi, city ups its golu theme game

CHENNAI: It’s that time of the year when golu shopping and hopping are a common sight in Chennai. Navaratri celebrations are incomplete without understanding the significance of bommais and golupadis. A resident of Nolambur, Nandhini Venkatesh has been keeping thematic golus in her house for the past 11 years. This year (12th year), Nandhini has made the golu arrangement spread across five rooms in her house.

Speaking about the nine thematic golus, she says, “First theme is the traditional golupadi - I have used all the bommais in my collection to set it up. The second concept conveys the importance of reading. Not just adults but even children also come to see our golu arrangement. I wanted them to understand the importance of reading.

In this golu display, popular actors like Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, MGR and Sivaji can be seen holding books. Another theme I took up this year is women empowerment - a huge cutout of a woman with eight hands has been made. It’s a tribute to multi-tasking women that we see around us.”

Nandhini’s golu set-up is the talk of the town during Navaratri and she loves coming up with out-of-the-box ideas. “The film Rocketry: The Nambi Effect is a retelling of former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayananʼs life. As a tribute to the celebrated scientist, I created a kolam depicting him. I have also made a rotating doll that has two sides - Aandal and Meenatchi. Chess Olympiad and Vinayagapuram are two other themes for this year.” The golu arrangement at Nirvignalakshmi Illam, Nolambur, is open to the public from 6 pm to 9 pm till October 10. For details, contact 98840 10932.

Siblings, Amarnath, Surendranath and Aparna, who popularised value-based thematic golus have come up with an interesting golupadi design this year. Instead of the traditional padi, the trio has created samachaturbhuja golu (in rhombus structure) at their Sumukham House in RA Puram. The trio is popularly known as The Mylapore Trio.

“People usually don’t experiment with golupadis. So, we created an innovative design in steps. We made the golu steps in the rhombus structure. A rhombus is a quadrilateral parallelogram - it has four sides, all of which are equal in length. For the bommais, we have kept 10 different designs of Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswathi that are made of paper mesh, plaster of Paris, ceramic, mud, etc. These dolls come in different heights, colours and styles. Usually, marapachi dolls will be in black colour. But for this golu arrangement, we have got marapachi dolls in a different colour,” says Amarnath.