Dasara habba

Dasara was always fun. Of course, with no TV, we were dependent on newspapers and photographs to get news about the large-scale preparation at the Mysuru palace "Nada Habba." My favorite photos included the elephants decked up in all glory. The city of Mysuru is pretty even on an ordinary day, but with all the grandeur, it's a sight to behold. 

A lot of the households had their version of the celebrations. As a family, the preparations began a few weeks in advance. The womenfolk would start making all the goodies like savouries and sweets for the naivedhya. Huge quantities were needed to be made, both for consumption by our large household and also to distribute to relatives and friends who would visit. Pity we couldn’t have our own life-size elephants :). An uncle and us children were in charge of the Gombe display for the event. The activity needed a lot of planning from choosing the themes to taking inventory of what is available and incrementally accumulating more by shopping for a new set. The shopping would be so much fun. We went to the markets in Jayanagar and  Gandhi bazaar, to check what new dolls of clay had arrived and asked for the price as if we had the money to buy everything “Ee Shetty anagadi set yestu ?”. "Alli aa Dodda Ganesha yestu" and so on. Taking out the existing inventory from the boxes and carefully removing the Gombe wrapped in hay and newspaper, without breaking them was a BIG feat. Most of them were made of clay and very fragile, especially the ones that had some small projections like holding a bow or a delicate nose, etc. The collections got more and more creative over the years. For the initial years, it was more of the clay gods, but one particular year we decided to add our own theme with mechano set creations, the cars, our bat and ball, and whatever else we could classify as “toy”. The most popular ones seen at homes were the Ramayana and the Mahabharata story themes, a wedding scene, singers at a temple or a collection of Gods. We went to multiple friends' houses to see the marvel display and of course for the food. Those 9 days we had our bases covered for the evening snack in one or multiple homes each day.

Apart from these, another key part of the Gombe display was the creation of a forest/ garden depending on what else we put into it. The standard was creating a sand bed, then sowing Ragi and maintaining it. This started a fortnight or more before. This ensured arguments about how much the ragi had grown overnight as a morning activity before heading to school. Once it grew, the key was to decide whether an elephant, a tiger, a camel, or a lion would go into the forest OR a bench, a merry go round oddly go into the garden based on how tall it had grown that year.     

After a long time I was lucky to witness a wonderful gombe display at a friend’s place. Just one look is enough to imagine the humongous effort, thinking, creativity, planning, and patience that would have gone into something like this. There was a Krishna collection, a Shiva collection, a Ramayana collection, a wedding scene, a Shetty shop scene, and a Mysuru procession. They even had a Harry Potter theme and a Lego set theme. The friend built a road for the processions and the cars .. Hats off to the effort of entire households who still manage to do this every year. Apart from these, the teachers and students in a class, the park, the vegetable vendors, and many more cute masterpieces. The Shetty shop was the local grocery store when we were growing up. The community of Shettys from Bangalore had at least one grocery store and the shops were the main source of household groceries and other requirements ( not to be confused with the Shettys of Indian cinema fame.) Some Shettys still own these stores but have diversified into cable TV, newspapers, milk delivery, and the like..

  

How can there be a festival without food?  The gojjuavalakki, mosaru avalakki, nipattu, and sweets we had were supposedly snacks, and with a couple of servings, it turned out to be dinner. 

The other festival of Navaratri that brought us joy was the Ayudha pooja. These celebrations, we witnessed both when we were taken to a factory where the large equipment and machinery, and the offices inside were all decorated with kunkuma, arishina, and loads of flowers. This was the day the folks prayed to their work tools, implements, and vehicles. A big pumpkin filled with kunkuma and coins was used to ward off evil by breaking it against the ground. I am not going to lie, it was very tempting to grab these coins and buy a treat from the Shetty angadi. Of course, there were sweets as prasada which we gorged on. At home the festival meant pooja to the tools and implements in the kitchen, the machines like the sewing machine, radio, etc. The vehicles pooje which we children were interested in the most. Washing the vehicles, decking them up with flowers. Keeping the lemons under the tyres and hearing them squish was a real joy. Later years we were allowed to start the vehicles. As a small kid, I even wanted my tricycle to be given as much importance. A lemon under the tyre and decorated with some flowers. The effort it took to squish under the tyres of a tricycle, Good luck to the adults. 

Some unique and interesting themes for Gombe in Bengaluru. in 2024 . This getting so creative year on year

My favourite festival of the nine days however was the Saraswati pooje. I was always inquisitive as to what day the festival was celebrated. It gave me the opportunity to keep the exact set of books that were needed for the holiday homework to be completed. I thought this was a more creative excuse for not completing the Dasara holiday homework rather than the Dog eating my homework but in vain ..

PC : Ganesh, Vinay, Yogesh and my pictures

Hope to be here during Dasara next year ..Till then me thinking about the effort families need putting the Gombe back carefully is an exhausting task..