The 9-day-long festival of Navratri festival dedicated to Maa Durga and her nine avatars has kicked in across many countries. The festival is celebrated with much fervor all across India by Hindus. As per Hindu rituals, Navratri is celebrated four times a year but only two of them are celebrated on a large scale which is Chaitra Navratri and Shardiya Navratri.
Each day of Navratri is associated with an incarnation of Goddess Durga. In India, Navratri is celebrated in different ways in different states. In Gujarat, people during these nine days play garba and dandiya and worship Maa Durga while in West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, and Bihar, a procession is taken out on the occasion of Vijayadashami where statues of Maa Durga are immersed in a river or sea. Ramlila is organised states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
On 17 October, MP Shashi Tharoor took to X (formerly Twitter) and shared a video of a folk dance from Kerala that looked a lot like dandiya. The video shared by the Thiruvananthapuram MP showed a group of women dressed in sarees and dancing with each other using sticks which resembles with dandiya played during Navratri.
In a post on X, he wrote, “Attention Gujarati sisters! This Navaratri, check out dandiya Kerala style!”
Reacting to his post, many users agreed calling the folk dance awesome while some one user said, “Its same, only our sticks are smaller, grace is same, fun is same”
Another user commented, “Beautiful indeed”
One user said, “Wow, this looks fascinating! Reminds me of Dandiya”
Some other wrote, “Still doesn’t beat the Gujarati style with the energy and the rhythm”
Another user also wrote, “Something absolutely new and entertaining to watch”
“Let it be in any style.... enjoying the festive mood should be ULTIMATE...,” some other user wrote.
