Navraatri.

Navraatri - "Festival of Dolls" is what I have known this festival for however it is literally translated to "Nine Nights".
I come from one of the southern states of India ~ Karnataka, where these 9 auspicious days are termed collectively as a festival of the state - naaDa Habba ~ Dasara.

This year's Dasara was special for me for a simple reason that it was the first festival I celebrated at my in-laws.[So that gives away the reason for my absence from blogging arena].

I had no time to set up anything great but did not want to let go the festival dry. So finally managed to find the Royal wedding dolls[Pattada Gombe ~ as we call them ] - which denotes the bride and groom from Mysore empire. I love the way they are decorated. The lady is adorned with a red saree and the jewels neatly placed  made her look more than perfect. The groom wears a mysore peta to match his silk kurta and dhoti.

Navaratri in Karnataka is not just about the pooja and rituals but more of fun and activity. In several homes  the dolls are collected year after year and arranged in a fashion that it speaks a story by itself for all its viewers. School kids have their mid-term vacation. The older generation pour in information from history and mythology while they involve the kids in the process of decorating and prepping for the Navraatri. That's how the facts trickle down the grape vine. Every evening there is a pooja done for the Dolls set and the prasad [naivedhyam] is distributed to all the kids who visit  to see the dolls.

This year I've planned to make 9 different variety of savories/sweets, 1 each day. The first day I made Coconut barfi - a simple Indian delicacy. Here is a click after the pooja on the third day day - thats when I made KodubaLe.

Copyright: A.N. PHOTOGRAPHY