Navratra

 Certain days have their own unique charm. Ashwin Shudh Pratipada, that is, the Beginning of the Navratra, belongs to that "D Day" kinda category. It augurs in the festive feel, beginning wih the Dasara to Diwali, and beyond.

Suddenly, the morning feels fresh. There is a nip in the very air, pleasantly cold, what with the rains in the retreat mode. The ambience is in the Go Green mood. Multi coloured flowers are in the bloom. Everywhere you have the small kiosks selling the navaratra special pooja essentials. Even when you are miles away from Bengal, that zingy zeal feel full of conches blowing,   castanets clinking fills the festive ambience.

Like the Bhadrapada Gauri Pooja, this Celebration is colourful in every way. Why, these days, women wear the colour of the day. The 'groupfies' are everywhere, on the social media, in the newspapers, and what have you.

Every Navratra, Aai used to clean up every nook and  corner of the home, brighten up every utensil. The home  would thus wear a happy smile. The "til", the sesame, flower garland for the goddess was compulsory. Their fragile beauty glowing golden yellow would give the devhara a priceless, precious feel, what with the samai, the holi diya, glowing mildly for twenty four by nine till the Dasara day.

Both of them, Aai-Papa, would keep the fast. Aai loved to celebrate the " hadaga". She used to draw the rangoli elephant on the wooden board, the "pat" (we still have it), decorate it beautifully with colours and flowers, prepare a tasty menu for the "khirapat", the special prasad, every evening. 

Sure, all these rituals are pretty. I think they have a deep meaning, too. The " hadaga", for example, teaches every young girl the worth of togetherness, of sharing. In fact, I would like to argue that not only is it an agrarian festivity celebrating the about to ripen kharip crop, imitated in the very  structure of the navaratra pooja, wherein you literally sow seeds that sprout, but it is also a celebration of the very feminine principle.

Any introductory text of sociology, political economy, ecology or archaeology would tell the truth universally established that women were the primeval farmers. They recognised the value, the worth of growing crops over the nomadic existence in and out of caves.

Even when the patrilineal, patriarchal set up took the control away from women, they were an integral part of the agrarian mode of production. Even today, in small farm based households, the woman of the family has a huge lot to contribute. Like her care-n-service duties within the family, such productivity is not part of any GDP as it is non-paid.

The navaratra festivities are actually a celebration, it can so easily be argued, of these primordial praxes. In the current digitalised days, women are more and more getting reduced to use-n-throw 'items'. The "dashhara", the doing away of the ten faces of Ravana, should be the killing of the ten and millions of harrassment modes of women!

Pratima@ yatra naryastu pujyante, that is, where women are prayed to, not preyed on!