Navratri

A few days ago I returned to Ahmedabad, and already upon arrival I was immediately plunged into the chaotic and noisy Navratri experience. 

Navratri means in Hindi “Nine nights.”

Nine endless nights of a dance, the Garba, that brings together ancient origins and Pop cultures. Garba is the national dance of Gujarat. I report about it although ignorant of India - but at the same time from firsthand experience. 

In three nights I was in three different places:

the backyard of my house, crowded for the occasion with thousands of celebrating boys and girls; a large auditorium set up for the occasion, with a stage full of drums, electric instruments and statues of goddesses, giant screens and the presence of a Bollywood star engaged in promoting his latest movie; and finally a more restrained and somehow exclusive evening, the first where the immense stacks of full volume loudspeakers did not tear my ears apart, and which at one point even offered an acoustic musical interlude, without amplification. 

The combined effect of the participants' colors is great. The women's dresses and ornaments are splendid. The traditional dress of the Gujarat girls is the Chaniya-Choli - comprised of a long skirt that crawls to the floor and spreads out in a wheel-like fashion in the dance, the Chaniya, and the Choli: a corset that leaves the navel uncovered and is knotted in the back with long ribbons that end in tassels and and sometimes a metal chain worked like a necklace. The Chaniya-Choli is complemented by a very long scarf that drapes around the waist, over one shoulder and down to the floor: the Dupatta. 

Necklaces and earrings in the Jhumka tradition are large, heavy and magnificent, like ornate candelabras or bells that vibrate with each dance step. Some women have an additional chain on each earring, which fastens with a hairpin to the hair, at the nape of the neck, and carries some of the weight of these sumptuous ornaments. Some wear a jewel in the middle of the forehead, instead of a Bindi, the colored dot between the eyebrows. 

 

Even in the costumes there is a confluence of different traditions. Some are heavy and colorful, like tropical parrots. How hot they must be! Others have headdresses that look like heavy carpets. Some sport hieratic white Yogi drapes. If the girls are all beautiful and colorful, the boys are no different: they sport Kurta, the long knee-length shirt, embellished with hand prints, or mirrors or metallic threads. Some wear plain monochrome, orange, or black kurtas. But then also sports a long, brightly colored scarfs to complement them.

 

Despite extremely daring color combinations, the result is almost always stunningly beautiful. The richness of the materials, the brocades, the cottons embellished with prints, the glitter of silver and gold jewelry or, conversely, the more subdued shadow of heavy Jhumka bells in oxidized metal finishes, come across as mysterious and beautiful, just stunning. 

 

In the meantime I, a gray and boring Westerner who thinks too much, do not dance and sit on the sidelines taking pictures and notes. 

I wonder about the religious roots of this festival. When I ask, no one seems to be able to answer in the way I would hope. Something I am told, however, is that Navratri occurs every year at the end of the monsoon season and celebrates Durga, a goddess who is one of the manifestations Parvati, consort of Shiva (Not only does India have a great many gods, but these change form and manifestation, making the landscape difficult to grasp).  Durga has a destructive aspect, and here we celebrate precisely the destruction by her of the Demon Mahishasura and the reestablishment of Dharma. It made me think of the carnival, a time of chaos so that an order may be restored. 

The sound is a mixture of ancient rhythms and teenage concert effects. It combines tribal with pop, with lights and smoke from the stage. Some of these songs, I am told, are prayers, but there is nothing in the expression of the locals that manifests any spiritual or emotional transport as I have seen in other parts of Asia. Nothing in the type of music, or in the attitude of the dancers, defines a clearly religious moment, marks a difference from other songs. Each song gradually blends into the next, and of one they say, “This is a hymn to the Goddess,” and of the other, “This is from Bollywood:”

Everyone seems to know all the songs: when the orchestra creates a pause for effect, ceasing to play for a few seconds, a chant immediately rises to confidently fill this void. 

There are garba schools, as well as samba schools in Brazil. Those who go to these schools learn some subtleties and complex steps, but the basis of this dance is quite simple: men and women randomly enter large circles and all in synchrony rotate, clap their hands, and begin an entertaining proceeding of a few steps forward and a few backward, which, however, always resolves itself with a continuous advance, so that each dancer is constantly moving, advancing - some with calm and measured gestures, others more Dionysian and unrestrained. They dance barefoot or in slippers that would seem ill-suited to dance, but, like all the wonderful, rambunctious rest, they work in the end. (That's one thing I'm learning about India: in the end, despite everything, it works). 

I could have tried some bouncing myself - but it seemed like too much; I was already busy facing people's stares since, night after night, I always found myself to be the only non-Indian. I saw two fair-skinned blond girls, one with features for me Italian but they, too, they swore to me, were Indian. While I am interested to understand, I wonder and investigate, these people seem intent simply on living, an art I have yet to learn on my part. 

 

They all look good, they all look happy. Carefree, at least. I listen to snippets of conversation in that mixture of Gujarati and English words that is the local parlance - the English words are so numerous that one always knows where the conversation will go. I listen, I watch, but I struggle to make contact with this Hindu culture, where compared to other religions women show quite generous portions of their bodies, but at the same time are passive subjects in a context where arranged marriages are the rule and unions are a transaction between families of great importance and delicacy in which one is well careful not to fray the delicate warp of the social fabric - despite the fact that attacks from the West, especially in large international metropolises like Delhi or Mumbai, have already wrought irreparable tears. 

 

I would crave a beer, but alcohol is not allowed here in Gujarat. The stage lights go out, some musicians with drums and wind instruments begin to play on the floor, in the center of the large circle. An acoustic Intermezzo, more collected, more intimate and, I imagine, perhaps more authentic, closer to the origin. Although, for my foreign tastes, it lacks the unbridled Dionysian element. After all, without alcohol...  

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