Gombe-Dussehra 2010

I'm not a very ritual-observing, religion-maanoing person on an average day. I do have a very strong belief in God and have my chats and spats with him ( sorry, feminists, it's a him in my mind!) but don't really get all observant on a daily basis. But come festival time and I get all serious about the rituals. In some ways, I see the rituals as cultural, even more than religious and I'm desperate to embed my children in Indian culture. Be it the festive food, or dressing up traditionally and dressing them traditionally, following the cultural rituals that my family followed since I was a child, I feel it also gives them a link back to the past. Particularly since my kids are Mundus and city-slickers, I feel I should make an extra effort to teach them things that link back to their maternal side and that connect them in some way with all their ancestors and traditions. I'm of course equally happy if A were to take on teaching them about traditions from his side of the family but I don't think they were raised particularly traditionally so that hasn't happened so far.

This year I decided to start the tradition of gombe koodusode - golu, as it is known in Tamil. Dad says the tradition began as a way of worshipping God and teaching creation to young kids. I see it as a way to celebrate and thank God for everything he has created in the world today - be it transportation or make-up, travel or animals...The display is put up by the first day of Dussehra and in the south, people are invited to each other's homes every evening for arshna-kunkuma ( haldi-kumkum), where they gather, sing classical devotional songs and eat traditional shundal. I and my sis used to have loads of fun at dusehra when we were kids, as mom had heaps of southis friends and we'd be out every evening doing this. Mom even had a friend known as 'dollmaami'( also called nannoottu-rendu maami because once upon a time she had lived in flat # 402!) because she used to decorate and dress up dolls as a hobby and set up a massive display every year. Setting up the gombe is meant to be a fun, interactive process with lots of participation from the kids in deciding what we should display and so on.

As it turned out, this year the process was short-circuited quite a bit. When I began, my parents were a bit under the weather. By the second or third day, a full-blown epidemic of typhoid and dengue was raging at chez parents, with grandma included, and we were running daily trips to the emergency at Max Hospital and others. One of those days, somehow I managed to take out an hour and put the display together - that was before we knew what the ailments were and were hoping it was just a viral of some kind. I shamelessly foraged and pillaged all possible display-ables from my parents' house, and culled the few toys at home that weren't in a hopeless state of destruction and put something together with a few sheets of chart-paper and an hour to spare for the task.

Eventually everyone wound up being hospitalized and we were being hospital attendants since the hospy said they didn't provide attendants so haldi-kumkum was given a grand miss. Thankfully everyone started recovering pretty fast and finally a few days ago, a full ten days after Dussehra, since I hadn't yet had the time to remove the display, I called Chubbocks's and Puddi's neighbourhood friends over, had them see it and gave them all some shundal. I'm happy I finally started the tradition and hopefully next year will be less dramatic and more fun! Here are some pix of the display:

The lowest tier was where we performed the puja on the few days that we could. The books are from Saraswati Puja - when I was a kid I always used to keep my Hindi and Maths books there so I wouldn't have to study them during the holidays!

The top layer always has many statues of Gods and Goddesses, with the woden dolls in the middle. These are typically given to girls when they get married and represent Vishnu and Lakshmi.

The middle Tier was a display of some of the countries/ places we have visited - Thailand, Toronto, Singapore, Italy, Switzerland, Venice, London, France( see the Asterix), New York, South Africa...

The thing on the left was meant to be a conservation message about saving our forests. In all the chaos, Chubbocks never made the poster stating that and the gardener forgot to water the 'trees' so that by the end the forest did look in dire need of rescue! On the right is a transportation display!

Shundal recipe:

Soak black chana overnight, then pressure cook until soft. If you want it very soft, add a little baking soda. Make a tadka with mustard seeds, green chillies, curry leaves, lots of heeng. Add the cooked chana and stir for a few moments. Turn off the heat and top with freshly grated coconut and lime juice and salt to taste. Tastes heavenly, hot or cold!