A teensy weensy adventure

 For the record, I took this picture with my point and click camera and not my SLR.

Showroom



Somehow Dassera has crept up on me. This year,  I had visions of making a trip to Chennai to add Tamilian Gollu style dolls to my collection.. Chennai apparently has these large showrooms of dolls during the Dassera season. Since that didn't happen,  Hosur sounded like an option (in Tamilnadu, near the Karnataka border) but after googling, it turns out that Malleswaram is the best to go to in Bangalore since there is a large Tamilian population there and dolls are imported from Chennai.  So I dropped my volunteering session at the school and trekked out to Malleswaram. I was telling a friend and she asked if I knew where to go and I said nope but I was hoping that the vendors would be on the street waiting for me to buy their stuff from them. As we were approaching Malleswaram, which is a painfully long 1.5 hour trek, I panicked and asked my driver if he knew of any places. He grunted which I interpreted as, "I don't know but  I'm willing to drive around a few blocks until you figure out that I don't know and make me ask someone." Many a time,  I  have misinterpreted his grunt and assumed he knew where he was going, only to find out that he'd been driving around aimlessly waiting for me to figure out that he didn't know where he was going.   Anyway, Malleswaram rescued me, on the main street itself, I spotted a store and literally jumped out of the car.  I was overwhelmed, there were so many dolls, I didn't know where to start.  I asked another woman shopping in the store if there were many more stores like this one and she said YES and pointed me in the right direction.  After perusing two more stores, one shopkeeper told me about a small showroom around the corner, I had hit the jackpot.  I followed other women around the stores to see what they liked,  to get an idea of what people buy and what they look for, everyone was friendly and helpful.  The man in the showroom spoke English and was very patient in identifying  the sets for me and telling me the stories behind them. I felt like I got a lesson in mythology this afternoon, it's actually a great place for a children's field trip. The Andhra Kondapalli and the Rajasthani dolls I bought earlier  are far more beautiful but those are meant to be show pieces on a mantle or in a cabinet and the ones I bought today are meant to be displayed in a kolluvu once a year, two different purposes and therefore the quality is different.  I did discover that  there are different qualities in the dolls I saw today, some are painted with enamel and others acrylic, the acrylic ones are lovelier and the faces are more detailed.  It was a fun experience, one I wished I had experienced 2 years before so I could have had a more interesting collection but I'm glad I went today. Before I headed back home, I treated myself to a cold glass of sugar cane juice and lychee rabdi,  what a sugar rush!!