Paavaadais for this season

Too bad I was not in good enough shape to capture the other two sets.. We will get them the next time they dress up to go to a temple or some other function.

Our girls are growing up.. too fast for my liking!


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Missing the golus

This year the wife, MIL and kids made it to all the golus over the last 2 1/2 days while I slept at home after taking painkillers.

We did manage some photographs of the kids in their new Paavaadais before they stepped out of the house. When I get back to regular typing speed or proficient mouse use will upload those photos.

Did not get a chance to eat all the lovely sundal or take photos of the golus. So here is a request to those relatives and friends who have let me photoblog their golus over the last 5 or 6 years. Please email me or Sangeetha a Photo of your golu, even if it is taken with your grainy cell phone and we post it all here next weekend.

Next year there is hope that daddy Narayanan will get to visit all the golus in good health and cheer and blog about it!

Thanks to all for your wishes. The hand is making nice progress.

Brush teeth - check
Take a bath on your own - check
Wear your own clothes and zip up pants - check
Eat with spoon - check
Write with pen - check
Type slowly with both hands - check

Driving and lifting heavier objects with right hand to be checked off tomorrow. Yoga plan from thursday. Then we will be back to the old normal routine.

Plan to go to work tomorrow and test out a few things as well!


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Navarathri Golus - 2010

This year's nine day celebration went by real fast. There was a three day time lapse with heavy pain killers that made it look like a six day festival.

The previous years golu collections are in this link. I know a lot of folks look for how their golus have evolved over time using the blog posts. Thank you all for allowing me to chronicle the fantastic doll displays.

The spirit of this festival is not in the doll displays. It is watching your kids have fun. Go to every one of their friends houses, play, eat sundal, dress up, sing, dance, collect goody bags and just enjoy being a kid!

A few photographs that capture this essence

The elaborate jewelry that kids wear with great love..




The joy of comparing goody bags..




or the joy of making photography really challenging for daddy (had to chop grandma's face because she was not amused by the kids making the photo session difficult!)




Now for this years golus. The HDR ones are obvious (most shots are a composite of 3 images std , +2 eV, -2 eV)and you can see the difference it makes.





































This year was fun. Next year as the golus morph in shape, size and color... will have a different way to capture the displays.. maybe go B&W to create that 1980's nostalgia? Go take close up of dolls in a set instead of the entire display?

Your ideas are always welcome!



Note to self: Just like we do an oil change or scheduled maintenance on the van two weeks before any long weekend for an anticipated road trip, always get your dental checkup two weeks before navrathri! It is a bad idea for Sundar to be left out in Sundal season..



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Golus are the perfect subject for HDR

See this one below!



Note, if you take a picture with a flash and capture this really good golu with a wide angle set to 18mm, you will not get the details in the shadows. You can even see the shadows of the beads in each step with the HDR image..

Loving it so far..


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Navaraathiri . . . thookam Yedhu.. ohhh

If you have not seen the Kamal movie MMKR, the title won't make sense to you. My apologies.

The last week was hectic with San being out of town till Thursday. Let us say that I pretty much went into survival mode as Daddy trying to juggle work and the kids.

When it was time for a much needed rest, there come the Navarathri celebrations and they started Friday.

So the afternoon nap still eludes me.. but this year thanks to the nice lenses taking photographs of Golus(doll displays) is a lot more fun!

This is a photograph of a lamp shot with the macro.




So far we have seen nine golus over friday evening to sunday evening. Have another 6 more to visit for sure between now and next saturday.

The pictures of all the golus will have to wait till next weekend. For now, work calls...



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Navarathri 2009 - The rest of the golus..

Previous golu posts on this blog...

2009 : first set of golus

2008 : Part 1 (Golumania), Part 2(padis), Part 3(Megolumaniacs)

2007 : Golus and Paavaadais, more paavadais and golus..

2006 : Don't know and don't remember why we missed the golu scene in 2006.. we had just moved to Cupertino and things seem to have been normal. But no golu posts...

2005 : The first golu post when San was still very pregnant with the little one (ah, how time flies!), stitch shots of golus

Now for the last of this years photos.. (the little one deleted two of the photos on the iPhone by mistake)































That is all folks!

The Chronicles of Navrathria continue next year.


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Golugraphy - Navarathri Golu's 2009

Wishing one and all a very happy Navarathri Golu season, Dushera, whatever other name the next ten days go by...

Golus from Bay area friends have made it to this blog for years now. This years photos do not do justice to the magnificent displays. Most of the pics were taken on the iphone instead of the canon (it will be obvious from the photos). Here are the pics from the golus we saw this weekend...































More Golu photos next week. The kids had a great time this weekend, singing, collecting eats, meeting friends, etc..

Here's to a better tomorrow!


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The Chronicles of Navrathria - Part 3

Now that Saraswathi pooja is over, it is time to release the rest of the golu photos!

Here goes..

The smaller? golus...When you have kids in their terrible twos, the golu tends to be empty on the lower steps and they put all the fragile dolls higher up. Don't remember noticing that when we were kids.







We will now demonstrate a method to calculate the LCM (Please refresh 7th standard Math) for the golus using a factorization method. This shows that the prime factors in a golu are...




Back to more photos..










The megolumaniacs !







This one had a mini Thirupathi setup on the side and it was amazing!




When you cannot capture the size of the steps at 28mm on a Digital Rebel and you have to resort to stitching, it implies that the golu just filled the entire room!




Finally, a couple of shots of our dolls in different paavaadais!







It was definitely fun, socializing, chronicling the golus, eating sundal(s) and watching the little one say "My paavaadai fits! It fits!" after last years experience of hand me downs (hey, if you are 1+ years old and have made only one India trip, chances are you are not going to have enough Paavaadai's that fit, especially if you are short and fare in the bottom 10 percentile for height!).

Here's looking forward to next years golu..



ps. We forgot to take the camera to some golus or simply could not get pictures without people in the frame.. so your golu's have not been featured?! here. Hey, there is always next year, right?


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