People have been thronging the Sri Kapaleeswarar Temple for the past few days. The reason apart from prayers is the mandapam decorated with a huge golu there.
The concept, creation, and execution was by the Mylapore Trio, S. Surendranath, S. Amarnath and S. Aparna, while the sponsor and organiser was Pankaj Bandari, from Smart Creations.
The theme of this interesting golu was ‘Ashta dhikku alankara golu’ which means a golu that faces all the eight main directions.
This golu was a seven step golu with a gopura kalasam on the topmost step. The golu steps were setup in the four main direction, north, south, east and west. Each side was given to one deity and all the dolls kept in that side was related to that deity.
In the four sub-directions, northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest, models of temple gopurams and
mandapams coated in 24kt gold were kept.
S.Surendranath said that most of the dolls were new, while some were dolls made by him, such as a set of stuffed dancing dolls, kolam design in a plate, etc.
The golu in the temple housed a wide variety of dolls such as kondapalli dolls of a man and a woman, a beautiful Bengali-styled Kolkata Kali doll, arumuga murugar, poykal guthirai, sangeetha mummurthigal, Nava graham, vinayakar in different poses such as panchamuka vinayakar, vinayakar on a swing, etc., dolls showing the different forms of amman, dolls of saraswathi and mahalakshmi, kali killing mahishasuran who comes in the form of a cow, and many more.
There was also a doll with many heads. When asked about it, S.Surendranath said a story. In the Mahabharata, when Arjunan says that he doesn’t want to fight a war against his own relatives, Krishna convinces him by taking Vishwarupam and explaining that he was Shivan, Vinayakar, Krishnar, Ramar, and all the gods.
Surendranath was happy that from little kids to adults, all had said that this was a new concept of keeping in the temple, because we would not be able to invite everyone to our house for golu, but anyone can come to the temple for viewing this golu.
He said that more then 5000 people viewed this golu everyday.