Celebration of Indian festival raises funds for CLAPA

November 20, 2024

An Indian storytelling event for a festival called Navarathri/Dussehra has raised hundreds of pounds for CLAPA.

Madhavi, an orthodontist with Alder Hey’s Cleft Team, hosted the event with her family including her Amma (mum), Chandrika.

Golu/Kolu is a festive display of dolls and figurines in South India. Madhavi explained: “In our family we do Kolu as stories and it’s like having a movie set at home. Amma worked for months to set up themes and get the dolls ready. She does all the dressing up of the dolls, changing them each year for different stories.”

“Our family has been doing this as a tradition for a very long time. My grandmother used to do it, as did my mum’s grandmother.”

“Our family has been doing this as a tradition for a very long time. My grandmother used to do it, as did my mum’s grandmother. I’ve picked it up from my mum and have also been doing it with my daughter, Lavanya, since she was three. She’s 21 now and I’ve accumulated about 20 boxes of dolls and other figurines over the years.”

For this year Chandrika depicted a traditional story about Hanuman, whose shape is half monkey, half human, from the epic ancient Indian texts Ramayana and Mahabharata.

Madhavi said: “Amma knows a lot of traditional stories. I don’t know how she remembers details, but all the elders used to tell stories, and pass them down to generations. Children love the traditional stories which are very exciting”

“I know them because I have heard them as bedtime stories, and then my daughter knows them as well.”

Chandrika added: “But my memory for traditional stories is definitely not as good as it was. I know them because I have heard them as bedtime stories, and then my daughter knows them as well.”

While Chandrika passes on the traditional stories in her Kolu display, Madhavi writes her own story based on a theme. She said she started writing her own stories when her daughter was young, based on modern and historical topics that children could relate to. This year she wrote about a girl named Tara, who was born in a village where there was no facilities for girls to attend school. Tara decides to travel and become educated, then returns to her village to create a school for children who do not have money to pay school fees.

Golu/Kolu stories are elaborately depicted over a series of odd numbered steps. Chandrika smiled: “My Kolu used to be a whole room, three or five or seven steps to tell a story. My display is usually about half a room now.”

“My colleague Siobhan describes it as a nativity display, but with a different story every year.”

Madhavi added: “My colleague Siobhan describes it as a nativity display, but with a different story every year. For me, the focus is on tradition and culture, and morals from the stories.”

As part of the Kolu festivities, people are invited into homes to see the displays. Around 200 people, including 60 children, visited Chandrika and Madhavi’s displays this year. All visitors are given a traditional South Indian meal.

“We had 40 to 50 people in each group from different cultures – neighbours, my daughter’s friends, my colleagues, my husband’s colleagues etc,” laughed Madhavi.

“We cook traditional Indian food, things you wouldn’t get easily in any restaurant in the UK – including varieties of spicy rice (tamarind rice, coconut rice) with a side dish and chutneys, and traditional rice and lentil crackers from India.”

Chandrika explained that planning for a Kolu display can take up to a year. The Hanuman story set was bought when she was at home in India earlier this year.

Unpacking the figures, setting them up and repacking takes around six weeks of work during Dussehra festival. Madhavi’s husband sets up the steps and special effect lighting. Chandrika painted the background scenes for her Hanuman story and her granddaughter Lavanya painted the backgrounds for her mum’s Tara story.

“But the hardest part is packing it all away afterwards,” Madhavi added. “Everything has to be bubble wrapped, labelled and catalogued. Amma is the expert at this!”

Visitors to the Kolu displays traditionally bring gifts of chocolates, sweets, flowers and candles. For this year, Madhavi invited people to make a donation to CLAPA and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital instead of a gift.

“I wanted to do something for CLAPA and the Alder Hey charity. I’ve been working with CLAPA on a research project for the last year about health inequalities, and the Alder Hey cleft charity funded the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) for the research.”

She added: “I wanted to do something for CLAPA and the Alder Hey charity. I’ve been working with CLAPA on a research project for the last year about health inequalities, and the Alder Hey cleft charity funded the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) for the research.

“With added Gift Aid, the donations for Kolu came to around £1000, which we’ve split between CLAPA and the Alder Hey cleft charity.”