As one walks through the narrow streets of Vilachery in Madurai, members of a family can be spotted perfecting terracotta idols, painting them to life and arranging an army of ‘kolu’ dolls. Most artisans are working with old songs belted out by a mobile phone and induction stoves with a vessel that would have been full of tea minutes ago. , to keep them going through the day’s work.
Customers in chunks can be seen vying for the best ‘kolu bommais’ for Navaratri. Among them, a group of women stood alone as they had a specific list of dolls: five houses, seven ‘Thavazhum Kannan’ figurines and so on. Usha Suman, one of the shoppers, said people of Sankaralingapuram near Virudhunagar offered dolls to the ‘Oor kolu’, a tradition at the Ramalinga Sowdeswari Amman temple. “Parents who want to marry off their wards would buy a ‘Radha Krishna set’. This time, we came in early to buy the best,” she said.
