Informant Information:

Vivek Ramachandran is a student at the University of Southern California studying Computer Science and Business Administration. He is originally from Milton, WA and moved to Los Angeles, CA for college. He is from an Indian background and enjoys watching the Seahawks win.

Tradition:

“So my family celebrates this Indian festival called “Kolu” yeah and it’s basically a festival where you… basically it entails displaying trinkets and dolls and figures of various Indian gods and then you have a bunch of people over at your house. It’s generally a good time because you get to see a lot of people. And then like my family liked to make it a potluck style so you’d always have a lot of good Indian food. I was a popular child so I always got to have my friends over and that would result in a lot of Smash tournaments or Pokemon tournaments or in one very specific case Star Wars the Force Unleashed tournaments.”

Q: What is “Kolu” for exactly?

“I’m not exactly sure which Holy day it falls on because it is a celebration of a Holy day and there are many of them. I think it’s to like welcome a god or celebrate the beginning of some season but I really couldn’t tell you.

Q: Is your celebration of “Kolu” similar to other people?

“Yes, so there’s actually… not like a correct way, but it generally does involve displaying dolls/figurines and most other families do that as well so I’d say we have a very standard celebration. I think that the biggest difference was that, at least for me, I had an excuse to have a ‘kid party’. So I found that pretty fun.”

Analysis:

Though the informant didn’t seem to know much about Kolu and only participated with his family, I was able to find some more information about Kolu from other sources. Kolu, otherwise known as Bommai Kolu/ Bomma Golu/ Bombe Habba, is a festival that praises the goddesses Saraswati, Parvati and Lakshmi. It takes place during the Dasara festival which is a festival that celebrates the victory of good over evil. The way the informant’s family celebrates is somewhat similar to other Indian families in that it involves food, but it is less “religious/ritualistic” than other celebrations.