Navratri - An commercial art form

Gujarat is the state of festival and celebrations. The upcoming festival of Navratri is the signature festival of Gujarat which is always awaited by the Gujju’s (Gujarati people). The celebration for 9 nights is full of colors, costumes, dance, music and devotions to Goddess Amba. The traditional way of celebrating this festival is specially seen in the society which the local people call as “Sheri Garba”. Garba is the dance form which is been the core part for the celebrations. We can see lots of traditional varieties in the costumes that are put up by the people playing the Garba.

If we look in the ancient period we can realize that what form this celebration has taken comparing to previous period. In ancient time this festival of 9 nights was been celebrated by devotees engaged in the spiritual world with the fellows and especially ladies who use to perform Garba in a typical style beholding the Garbo. This trend was not at all dependent on the loud music or any modern style for playing Garba. In the modern era these spiritual festivals have become the platform for commercial deals. The big business man organize the 9 night’s celebration and does crore of rupees of investment followed by the sponsorship, marketing endorsement and many other things. People are paying prices for getting entered into the party plot just for enjoying the Garba which they were already enjoying in the area near by their residence which was more traditional and spiritual then this party plot and other big events on the name of celebrating Navratri. I remember the place where my grandfather uses to go for Garba, which was the place where there was no decoration, no colorful lights, no music, and no entry fee. All the people would play the simple Garba in round, producing sound just by clapping and 2 fellows would be singing the Garba of goddess. This is the real way for celebration, not like the big events in which instead of Garba singers would be singing the filmy songs like “munni badnaam” that is ridiculous. Gujju's are good at business that they found out from their own traditional festival also.  

Anyways the Navratri is coming up; as usual Gujju’s are popping up for the 16^th October 2012 for the 1^st night of Navratri I wish all the people Happy Navratri, Jay Maa Ambe. 

NASTIK education

There are various incidents that are happening in life which are forcing me to think on it and when I do so I found that my thinking on any of such issues/incidents are overlapping as am not differentiating the positive and negative aspect of the same. Recently I saw the movie OMG(O My God) which depicts the reality of the spiritual care taker of god who are so called BABA’s in India who runs the business on the name of god and are diverting devotees and on other side they are also forcing the people to discontinue their faith on the god due to fraud BABA’s and this is not only the reason that  people are not having faith in god, I think that education is also playing an role in making people so called “NASTIK” (as in Hindi phrase).

Education is no doubt providing an individual to think intellectually but this intellectuality is sometimes getting on with the ego and resulting in over confidence. One of my friends shared his experience with me that was he once offered Prasad to one of his professor the professor replied that am not taking it as Prasad but I would take it as a kind of sweet. So this thinking of an highly educated person is somewhat an unfaith in religion which is all due to his high intellectual thinking which came from reading different work of various writers or philosophers. They are trying to imitate their identity to be individual who totally believes in practical and logical work. It’s totally correct that one must think practically on different things and situation and it’s for sure that by consuming any Prasad any one is not going to be benefited but you are a part of society and it is having an actor like religion which is having a great impact in societal life of individual so one must at least try to be inclusive by being the part of the system or belief that is prevailing from long.

So getting educated is not enough for an individual to be the part of the society. One must try to be inclusive in societal norms although its sometimes not making any difference on practical ground.