Navaratri Vibes – SisterWars

Hi and welcome back to SisterWars!

In this blog post, you will get to know more about Navratri and Dussehra, what we do in that and what is that festival there for.

Significance of Navaratri-

Navaratri is a span of 9 days where each day is dedicated to one form of Goddess Durga..

On each day, a type of Durga is worshiped to celebrate the ultimate victory of “God over Evil”.

How is Navaratri celebrated?

In South India, during Navaratri, we keep dolls/idols of gods and goddesses on steps and decorate them.. We also keep humans like gods.. In Tamil, we call this “Golu”…This Golu depicts scenes of ancient times. This is the time of the year that you revisit those precious lessons from timeless, age-old stories.

This year’s Navaratri celebration

The first step of getting ready for Navaratri, is setting up the steps and decorating them..

1 day before Navratri, with the help of my dad and grandmom, we bring down the dolls from the loft and slowly one by one take them down and place them on the floor…

After this, we slowly make a plan and start arranging the dolls on the steps..

As an additional thing I always make a park.. This time it was a Masai Mara safari and a Market.. I had a lot of preparation for setting up this time’s Market and Masai Mara safari in my room. ..

Whenever my mom gets free, I take the opportunity, I take her help and set it up downstairs next to the steps..

So, here is the photo of the final look of the Golu!!

During the Navaratri, we call people home, to see our Golu, we also give them Tambulam and Haldi Kumkum.. Tambulam is where we give coconut, betel nut, betel leaf..

My grandmom put a estimate saying that there might be around 100 people coming this time! So we kept a 100 Tambulam ready….

For my own understanding of how many people came, I always have a paper and pen to write attendance!!

Finally! The week where I am going to be super busy with people coming home back to back…

We had a Rangoli design plate, where we could put flowers or Powder.. Me and my mom put powder and made the Rangoli..

Welcoming the guests with a bright colour really makes a difference!

There is also a part in this Navratri, where we go to other people’s houses too to see and enjoy their Golu(if they have kept it!!)… We go to their house, sing a song for a gift! and come back!!

On Navami(the ninth day of Navaratri) we do “Saraswathi puja”.. We do 2 different puja’s.. One for the vehicle and one for our books..

For the vehicle puja, we put haldi, Kumkum, and Vibhuti and take arthi for all our vehicles.. After this, we put lemons under each of the tires of that vehicle and ride over it.. After that the final step we go for a round in our vehicle wishing a more safe journey when we ride.

And the main pooja is for the books.. In this puja, we put book’s that we want to have more knowledge or we need to work on.. We keep these books on the ashtami(the 8th day).. The next day, we do not need to study/ do any work, but on Dussehra, we take out those books, and read/practice them…