Navrathri

October is a joyous month full of festivities. It brings Navrathri and sometime, like this year, packs that and Diwali in it as well. Staying at home, maternal home that is, this whole week of Navrathri brought back so much of childhood memories. It was a weird sense of deja vu being around the whole family, with plenty of kids running around and all the festivities. It was weird in the sense that you see something that seems familiar just that you find that now you are no longer an active participant but also an observer really :) Anyways, more of that later.

Growing up in Delhi, the navrathri holidays are super fun for 2 reason - 1) Its the much needed respite from the 1st term exams that gets over in Sept 2) The winter just starts to peep in and the 2 week break is such a nice way to welcome the chilly incoming winter.

Navrathri is when the vacation kicks in first and the festivities much later. It could also be about the fact that its mostly the last 3 days that is of more eminence that any other days. But the only difference being that our north indian neighbors would do the puja every day of the festival and call girls over to break their fast (ok that didn't come out right! What I mean is that they fast everyday and in the evening, they do a puja and feed a couple of girls the prasad and only post which they can consume any food). Crazy no ! At least thats what we used to think those days, the concept that someone could starve themselves for the whole day during festivals when the first thing you should do is stuff your face was incomprehensible for us !

Navrathri is when cousins come together and have loads of fun.. Families get together to meet and make merry especially during Kolu season. My grandmother used to keep Kolu every single year and for some years my mother did too. Those were fun times, irrespective of whose house (grandparents house was always a stone's throw away from mine). Kolu is a hard core Tamil tradition and it always brings mixed feelings for the kids. There are happy things associated with it like the daily dose of sweets, the whole decorating and setting up bit etc. Then there are not so happy bits too, the whole wear traditional clothes coz 'mami's may come home and when someone does come over, their ever shrill voice that goes 'oru paatu paaden' etc ! I hated those bits I must say. I am not sure if that's just me or does every teenager or tween hate that as well, but I sure did hang around with a very morose expression.

Navrathri is also puja time when we do all kinds of pujas. Grandpa was always very particular about attendance and somehow despite that my brother used to escape. I guess a part of me did not escape because I didn't want to. I think it was nice to do these things while we could because now we hardly can even if we want to. I would sit through Ganesh Puja, Saraswati Puja, Ayuda puja and then Lakshmi puja. Saraswati puja is most fun because you need to keep your books near the god for full 3 days and cannot touch it till the puja is done. Even though there is really no reason you would have touched those books anyway, the concept always brought a lot of excitement :) After you are done though, grandpa insisted that we studied the same books for about 2 hours, which sucked big time !!

Ayuda Puja meant putting bindis on just about everything. The idea is to respect all the so called instruments in our life and take extra care of them that day e.g. Cars/ Bike/ Cycles/ blenders/ Fridge etc... We would walk around with haldi and kumkum that mom would give us in bowls and put colorful bindis on just about anything that was metallic !!

Vijaydashami also meant Ram Lila. In Delhi, that is just huge. We would plan for days ahead and buy tickets or plan on clothes that we would wear to go see Ram lila. If we were lucky, we would be taken to the Ram Lila maidan in Old Delhi, if not so lucky then the local Ram Lila in the nearest school playground. For those who don't know what that is, Ram Lila is like a carnival where there would be an enactment of Ramayan for 9 days culminating with the Ravan Vadh on Vijaydashami. The culmination is spectacular because there would be effigies of Ravan with all the 10 heads along with Ram and Sita. On the last day, the effigy of Ravan is burnt in a very grand way. I know it sounds like a grand act of arson :P But as a kid, its the ultimate fun ! The whole carnival atmosphere, buying silly things like paper swords or plastic Hanuman gadas, eating all kind of junk food and finally the fireworks ! Its worth waiting a whole year just for that....

Vijaydashami was also when my mom would drag me to my 'Paatu' teachers house (Carnatic teacher), make me fall on her feet and give her a tray full of god knows what! After a few years, i was a robot, used to just fall without any cues ! It would also mean a small paatu katcheri at my teachers house where she would make the students sing for the benefit of the parents and then give individual feedbacks on each one of them. The group singing was always funny for some reason and it would always end up in a giggling fit. Someone invariably would start with a whimper of a giggle and then before you know it the entire batch of about 12-15 girls would just start giggling. Despite the fact that it would happen every single year, my teacher was always very stoic about it. She used to keep a pen next to her and if she saw anyone with a hint of giggle or a bad note (shruthi/scale) for that matter, she would literally throw the pen at the poor soul...I think we have all had our share of pens being thrown at us and it didn't faze at a tiny bit :) Every year, she would also tell my mom that your daughter has a very nice voice but she is just not interested, if only she puts in some effort she can be wonderful... I think about that nostalgically even now because during all those years, I used to hate singing and was forced to learn. Now that I do like singing, I can't go back....

Back to the present, it has been a lovely week so far. Families getting together, people visiting every day, Kolu's in people's houses and temple visits. It has been a nice reminder of what could be had despite busy schedules and disparate lives.

Some things haven't changed - like my granny screaming at me for not taking a shower even at 11 in the morning and touching her 'prasadam' without taking a bath, my mom making me wear a bigger an bigger bindi coz whatever i wear is apparently just not visible enough !

Some things have - I can now sit and watch my younger cousins in their teens go thru the torture of 'Oru paatu paaden' and smile and it is somehow much more significantly important that Viv sits or at least watches all the puja and no one really cares if I even make an appearance near the god.

I watch the kids running around screaming and laughing while my granny is running behind them to make them stop (not so much running as waddling, but nonetheless) and it feels like yesterday that she was doing the same for me, my bro and my cousins. And now its the same but the next generation doing the exact same thing :) Life is funny that way....But all in all there is a lot to be thankful for and I hope someday Viv sees that too.....