Navaratri is a lovely time of the year. The nine-day festival is a celebration of the Divine Feminine in all her resplendent forms — mother, daughter, artiste, warrior, musician, danseuse, princess, and others.
Navaratri arrives in the Oct-Nov time frame, as autumn descends on India and temperatures start falling. Not entirely so, because summer is a tenacious season, and October heat is a real, tangible beast. But Navaratri nights were/are always cool. And this is so important, because Navaratri nights are all about dancing. This is not the slow, sedate kind of dancing but more the spirited, energetic type.
People gather every evening, form a circle (or some kind of elongated circular-oval formation), and dance. The circle moves quick and smooth, and you have to keep pace with your fellow dancers. The hand clapping is basic, but the footwork is often sweeping and elaborate. The music used to comprise of traditional melodies and simple rhythms, but today you can find a melange of movie song remixes, disco beats, electronica and funky new tunes during Navaratri. All music that is even remotely hummable is packaged into a Navaratri-friendly format, which means you can dance to it, all night long.
Navaratri is also about gorgeous Indian clothing and jewelry (not shoes, because most people kick them off before dancing), which means that you get to see women beautifully dressed in shimmering chaniya-cholis and lehengas, jewelry swinging from ears, necks, waists and wrists. Guys wear colorful kurtas and kurtis, dupattas/stoles carelessly slung around the shoulders, looking every bit as dashing and attractive as their female partners.
Each apartment/building complex typically hosts its own Navaratri dance celebration, small or large, depending on the space at hand. Some larger event venues stage mega Navaratri events featuring circles within circles with hundreds of dancers. The innermost circles are where you’d see the most experimental performers, their moves grand and spectacularly elaborate. These dancers are the prizewinning types, and if you are unable to keep pace with their whirling energies, you are better off moving to one of the outer circles where the dance steps are simpler and everyone moves slower.
In my building complex, the dances took place right beneath my apartment balcony, and I could hear them all night long. I could see older aunties moving gracefully at a steady rhythm, enthusiastic young men and women doing their fancy moves, older uncles keeping pace in their own slow way, and lots of little kids playing/dancing along. And everyone would be all aglow, smiling and laughing and chatting and dancing. The music would wind down at a reasonable hour, and the adventurous folks would head to another venue, dance for hours, rinse and repeat, all night long until dawn. Make your way home at the end of a night of dancing, catch some sleep, go to work (or not), then do it all over again… For nine straight nights.
It was a magnificent spectacle, one that I watched from afar for years, through my childhood and youth. I seriously ached to join in the dancing and merriment but I never did, not even a single time.
You see, I was a shy kid. Not that you’d ever know because I was so good at playing the role of an extrovert. I’d regularly speak up in class, and raise my hand at every question the teacher asked. I had a comment or opinion on everything, and I wasn’t shy about opening my mouth and sharing it either. But I had no friends to speak of. I spent all my years in school feeling like a misfit, an awkward outsider. I am still befuddled to this day how I projected such a confident exterior, even as I hungered for friendship and connection with my peers.
I think it all began in my kiddie days. I was painfully sensitive as a child. Our apartment building was inhabited mostly by Gujarati families, and most kids spoke Gujarati among themselves. My family hails from Kerala, and Malayalam is our native tongue. I spoke no Gujarati, and I was too shy to go introduce myself to the other kids. So I stayed home. And no one came looking for me. I spent my childhood immersed in books and reading, fantasizing about friends and fun times. I played little, preferring to spend time with books, dance, music, films, and so on. I had no friends at home or at school.
It felt like I lacked a basic gene or something equally fundamental that prevented me from connecting with others my age, and this seemed to follow me everywhere.
I have felt like a misfit, many times in life… and not just at school. And I have been regarded as a snob, an uppity kind of personality. Again, this befuddles me, but it seems that this is not an uncommon experience, after all.
Anyway, this isn’t a pathetic story about a lonesome childhood. It is an honest attempt to describe a childhood, and it may not be all that unique an experience.
A child’s life isn’t always simple. It isn’t about friends, play, or fun all the time. A child has a complex inner world, and the pain and nervousness is real. There is genuine confusion, and fear of judgment, and awkwardness, and all of that. There is internal conflict about self and the other, about fitting in and standing out.
And some of us experience this more acutely than the others, yes.
