Navratri : Festival of lights, Colors and Music!
To Begin with, Navratri my personal Favourite Festival of all time is around.. I wait for the whole year for this festival..When I was in school, we always had ‘My Favourite Festival’ as an essay topic. Invariably, majority of my class would resort to writing ‘Diwali’ or ‘Holi’. Easy to describe, easy to write – in English, Hindi, Marathi. But I made it a point to write on ‘Navratri’. Because it was/is still my favourite festival. Not Diwali or Holi. Navratri means 9 nights. Nav = nine and ratri = nights. Navratri is a festival of goddess Durga. It is filled with lots of lights,colorful outfits and music!!
There’s something about dancing for 9 nights. Diwali is for 3-4 days, Holi for 2 days. Diwali grants a vacation, it is an excuse to extort money in the name of “Diwali Bonus” – something the postman, maids indulge in. Holi is another excuse to get drunk on bhaang and also to molest.
We Gujarati's celebrate it like nothing less.. The whole 9 days are like party for us!
Earlier, the dancing used to go on till 1 am, at times till 3 am. But sadly now, it’s just till ten, on weekends till midnight. Navratri is characterised by "dandiya, garba, ghaati dance, Bollywood dance – inclusive of thumkas and jhatkas." My fave among the lot has to be garba - the clapping with a beat, twirling, concentration to get the steps right. But in the midst of all of this, due to uncoordinated efforts someone always gets hurt. My feet have been stamped upon and I have stamped upon others feet too. Though at times i have been stamped upon and hav badly hurt my foot, but this has never stopped me from playing garba.. there is something in those music that the whole of tiredness vanishes as soon as the music starts..
So garba has a few steps, often accessorised with claps, jumps. People from age 5yrs to 70yrs come and play garba..
There’s ‘popat’. It looks like its really tough but it isn’t. Took me a while to perform it with confidence and without biting my lower lip in concentration. But the funniest has to be something called ‘sanedo’.
Sanedo requires one to sit on hunches, beat the sticks on the ground and then jump up all of a sudden and start dancing!!! I almost died laughing when I did it for the first time. And you dance on a song which goes like “Sanedo sanedo lal lal sanedo"
And then there’s dandiya. A stick is all you need. The step is pretty senseless but it’s a refreshing change when garba becomes monotonous. Dandiya is sometimes used to beat up people. Invariably people get -
Hit on the finger
Hit on the knuckle
Or get poked in eye
I have used it once, while dancing to intentionally hit someone on the knuckles hard for my own reasons. It also used for mock sword fighting.
But this is dance. There’s more to Navratri. Prasad (offerings to God). I just realised Navratri for me is less about praying and more about having fun with my friends. It acts like a reunion of sorts. All those whom you have not met the whole year will meet you like long lost siblings in navratri..
Falguni Pathak is like the Trademark of navratri she sings the best! The crowd who come to play when she is singing is like a crowd came in to watch SRK or Amitabh Bachchan.The rates of the passes where she is performing goes up like the petrol prices..
There is a funny Quote on it : Aa Gaya woh mahina jab tu khaas hai, agar tere pass Falguni ka pass hai.. :D
With Navratri, the jazziest outfits come out of the closet. Chaniya Cholis, (heavily embroidered blouse with a skirt and a stole – for women) Kediyas (A blouse with a flare, dhoti, stole and a turban for men) , Churidhar Kurta (for women and men alike), Salwar Kameez (Kameez is the same as a kurta, salwar is similar to a harem pant, worn by women). Oxidised jewelery, sparkly dupattas – you name it!
And then there’s boy-girl dynamics. A lot of eye-candy, staring, eyes locked for brief periods of time. Who’s checking out who, who’s cute. Navratri’s all about that jazz. But it lasts for 9 days only. Very few have managed to sustain the staring, flirting and checking out. Because Navratri eye candy is different from regular eye candy.
Another activity that’s a lot of fun with friends is to search for manic dancing, bad dancers and horrible outfits. Manic dancing tops the list in providing the best entertainment. There’s a lot of uncoordinated, goofy moves which doesn’t go unnoticed by us, in spite of the enormity of the said moves. This is the most celebrated festival all over India..
but I know it was as similar to this post as it could get… I wish I still had it with me… Huh..I was such a fool not to keep my articles safely..In fact, I don’t have the most of them with me 
