Hundreds of vibrant-hued dolls take their place in Ravindranath Bharadwaj's house, a cable operator, situated in a quiet bylane in Basavanagudi in Bangalore during Navratri. The furniture is moved out of the house to make room for them.
This year, the twelfth since the tradition began, the theme is Goddess Durga. The lady of the house, Veena Ravindranath, who works as a senior lecturer at a Bangalore college, got a few items couriered from Kolkata for the occasion. "The idols arrived broken. We wasted two days fixing them," she said, only to be chided by her daughter Shrisha Bharadwaj.
"Don't say wasted, ma," she says emerging from the bedroom all dressed up for the occasion. The 12-year-old, who studies in Std VII, is a familiar face on the big screen and TV. With the panache of a seasoned TV anchor, she narrates stories from the puranas, pointing at the relevant scenes depicted on the long bed of sand all around the house. She brings alive the tales by using both Kannada and English to add drama to her act. "Bigger the audience, more colourful her performance," smiles a proud Veena, who inherited passion for these dolls from her mother. Putting on a show that wins prizes year after year is no mean feat. The family spends almost two months planning the 10-day show. This year, Shrisha has a special section designed with Barbie dolls that she calls the Shrikshi Expo (she derived the title by combining her own name with that of her brother Kshitij).
