Navratri in class.

-
Yoga class walk is very interesting. There is a restaurant, beer bar, ac repair shops,paper shop, tailors, idli dosa atta shop, car battery repair shop, . I love the smell of all these shops. I love the smell of petrol, fresh paper and the cooling liquid in batteries. I can eat all of it.
The class celebrates navratri next friday. They said id you go to shivaji park you see half of India. They speak in Marathi. I am translating all that I understood. At Shivaji Park, there is Durga Puja like West bengal, there is Ramayan play going on with the bhajan and dohai. The male characters play Sita, Kaikeyi, Kaushalya and Mandodari. Then the gymkhana has garba so thats Gujarat for you. She wanted to know if students know what happens in Maharashtra. Two ladies stood up and shared. The girls got together sang songs in the evening drew an elephant and played games around it, danced and made prasad. The songs were all of how a child bride goes to her mom s house and all in laws try to get her back home. She back answers when they try to bribe her to come home. Both the ladies sang those songs. One of them sang very well and the whole class was clapping to the beat of the song. Then we did shavasana.
Ambe Maa visits her mother for nine days and returns to her in laws on Dushera. She is very happy for nine days and her friends visit her every night and they all play Garba. The elders of the family sing and watch over the celebrations.Bolo Ambe maat ni Jai.
The idli dosa atta shop is run by a lady who was a researcher with a big hospital in Mumbai. After children, she quit her job and started making atta to sell.
Cheers to Women power!

Comments

  1. vinaySeptember 20, 2009 at 12:48 PM

    festivity time all around.

    Enjoy during this period.

    update about the Navratri celebration in ur class.

    regards

    ReplyDelete
  2. MallikaSeptember 21, 2009 at 10:02 AM

    Hi parul,

    That was classy... smell of petrol n batteries. Even i can eat all that i love it!

    I believe i am lucky to be an Indian,where elsein the world can u get so much to celebrate about. So much of colour n happiness around you!!

    Seems your Yoga class is a wonderful place to be at. Enjoy n soak yourself in the festivities.Spread love n cheer n happiness around which you are so Good at.

    Love n Hugs.

    Malli

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nange Paon in Navratri

-
When I was working and staying in the hostel, I kind of stopped believing in most festivals and rituals. I thought all this was some weird things which people did, it had no scientific base and why should I follow anyone. In the college hostel, vacations were time to go home and not connected with any festival except Diwali. Sophia College hostel was a cocoon in the heart of South Mumbai. The campus with an old palace building was a quiet oasis with trees and birds, in the mayhem of Mumbai. No festival touched it unless the college celebrated it. The Polytechnic had rock shows and one Dandiya night every year, which it soon stopped having by 1988. Only celebration was the Vegetable Biryani in lunch on Sundays. The Polytechnic hostel did not even believe in pampering the children with food. Memories of bread being there round the clock for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. For them, while the non vegetarians ate eggs for breakfast, the vegetarian had bread. And then when non vegetaria...
Read more

Shraddh period in Hinduism

-
According to the Hindu calendar, this is the shraddh period going on.  For fifteen days in a year, the ancestors are remembered and prayed to. No auspicious events / ceremonies take place in this time. People use the tithi/date of death to invite a Pandit and feed the departed soul. It means you remember the person passed away, give food to the Pandit and the crows. People keep a cooked meal on the terrace. They try to make the favourite food of the departed person. My memories are of my Grandma mixing and crushing all the savouries with her hands and when it was in form of  a paste, my Uncle would go to the terrace and throw the food for the crows. Crows in Hinduism are considered messengers of the departed souls. A lot of people feed Gathiyas to the crows for the full year. If your ancestors are happy, then your life goes well ,is the general belief amongst Hindus. The shraddh period falls exactly between Ganpati and Navratri. One does not buy a house or have...
Read more

Antakshari

-
Today we were playing antakshari at the Holi get together. We did not know any new songs so naturally only the golden melodies were being sung. The whole generation playing antakshari was singing the similar era songs on the alphabets they got. I realised a couple of things. In English language there is no game like Antakshari. How many sentences end with I or The? How can you sing when most songs start with I, The, Once, When and How?I cannot resist explaining the game, we all grow up with, in India. Antakshari means Ant : end , Akshar: alphabet ie last letter of the word. Akshar also means God. It also means God has the last word. Its a game with two teams and we call the teams as  'party'.  We say "Baithey baithey kya karein, karna hai kuchh kaam, shuru karo antakshari , le ka Hari ka naam." Translated from Hindi, We are sitting idle, lets do some work, lets start antakshari, starting with God's name. In Indian games, there is a lot of religion or belief in Go...
Read more