What stands before you is a Gollu, called Kolu in Tamil, Bommala Koluvu in Telugu and Bombe Habba in Kannada: the South Indian way of keeping Navaratri. For nine nights each autumn, families clear a wall of the house, build a flight of steps, cover them in fresh cloth and bring out a collection of idols and dolls that has usually been growing for generations. The word kolu carries the sense of a royal court or a divine presence holding audience, and that is exactly what the steps are: the gods, the saints and the whole of creation seated in durbar for nine nights, with the household as host.
Nothing here is for sale, and nothing is a decoration only. Each piece has been chosen, carried home from a temple town or a pilgrimage, or handed down, and each has a story. Many have been in the family longer than the people arranging them. One new doll is customarily added every year, so a Gollu is also a record of the years a family has kept it.
Why seven steps
The steps are always built in an odd number (three, five, seven, nine or eleven) and we keep seven. Read from the top down, they are a ladder of creation. The highest steps hold the gods and goddesses; below them come the avatars, the saints and the teachers; then the kings, the temples and the great stories; and at the foot of the steps come human beings at their daily work, the animals, the birds and the things of ordinary life.
The order is the point. Placed this way, the display says that the divine and the everyday belong to a single continuous order, and that the lowest step is not a lesser place but a proper one. A cow, a grandmother, a vegetable seller and a merchant's shop sit at the bottom with as much dignity as Venkateshwara has at the top. In a tradition with very little written instruction for ordinary households, this was how children learned both the stories and their place within them.
The nine nights
Navaratri means simply nine nights, and they are given to the goddess in her three great aspects: Durga, who destroys what must be destroyed; Lakshmi, who gives abundance; and Saraswati, who gives knowledge. Many homes divide the nine days three and three and three between them.
The ninth day belongs to Saraswati. Books, pens and musical instruments are placed before the steps and deliberately left unopened and unplayed, out of respect, and Ayudha Puja is performed on the tools and vehicles the family depends on. The tenth day, Vijayadashami, is held to be the most auspicious day of the year to begin learning anything new, and a child's first letters are traditionally written on it. On that day the idols are laid down to sleep, one is turned to face the wall, and the collection is then wrapped and packed away for another year.
The Marapachi dolls
Among all the idols, look for the pair of plain wooden dolls on the fourth step. These are the Marapachi bommai, carved usually from red sandalwood, and no Gollu is complete without them. They are given to a daughter when she marries, or when she first sets up a Gollu of her own, and passed down from mother to daughter after that. See entry 4.6.
They are the least ornate things on the steps and almost always the oldest. In many households they are also the only pieces that are dressed and re-dressed every year, which is why a family's Marapachi dolls tend to be the ones the children know best.
What happens here each evening
Each evening a kolam is drawn at the threshold, the lamps are lit, the aarti is performed and shlokas and songs are sung standing before the steps, often by whoever in the family or among the guests can be persuaded to sing. Sundal, a dish of soaked and tempered legumes, is offered to the goddess and then to everyone present, and a different legume is used on each of the nine days.
Women and girls who visit are given thamboolam: betel leaves and nut, a coconut, fruit, flowers, bangles, turmeric and kumkum, before they leave. If you are offered any of this, it is not a formality: being received, fed and sent home with thamboolam is the whole substance of a Gollu visit. Please do sing if you are asked, and please do not leave hungry.