Navratri at CEPT again

Karuna invited me over to dinner tonight. Gaurab is staying there while he is here in Ahmedabad; he bought a mattress and is staying in the living room. She cooks her food earlier in the morning when it’s cooler. They live way out off of Judges Bungalow Char Rasta just near SG highway, so I had trouble telling the auto driver where to go. I ended up just walking there because I remembered the way from Hyderabadi Biriyani. They found a place to buy chicken, so she made that, some fried rice, daal, cucumber salad, and fruit. We watched the Navratri dancers out the balcony for awhile, and a cricket match was on. It seems like such this esoteric sport! If I though football was confusing, it is nothing to cricket.

Then I went over to CEPT for garba. Richa was all dressed up with Vishal, and Anushrav and his wife Moksha, Dharmesh and Rina, and Vivek and his wife, Shivani. All of them except Richa and Vishal were from Gujarat, where this festival is the biggest, and you practically can’t get them to stop dancing! It’s soo cute. It was soooo hot and humid though, after dancing I was pretty much soaked with sweat and disgusting, but so was everyone else. They have a break at around 12, and I think I got back home around 1:30. It’s kind of an 8 step dance where you tap your foot out to the side, sort of like a conga, but you tap yourself around in a circle, and the last step you spin around and start over.

Vibrant Gujarat Navratri Celebration

Arpita and I were going to go see this presentation at 7:30 but we got there and must have had the wrong address! So we were near Law Garden and decided to eat at the place called Swati Snacks. We decided to go on the the Vibrant Gujarat Navratri celebration then; it was in the big empty fairgrounds near Helmet char rasta across from where we lived here before, and it was huge! When we first go there it wasn’t very crowded, so we went and saw a display sent up by the Gujarat Tourism department with all the pictures from places all over the state. There were all these big huge models of like the hill stations in Gujarat with water falls and things. They also had all these booths set up selling handicrafts of Gujarat. I found these cool threadwork earrings like Arpita had, so bought a pair for me and Carly. They also had some cool little enamel boxes, so I bought one for a gift for someone.

Arpita had been there a few days before and had some chocolate cake, and so wanted to get another piece. I had some sugar free ice cream that wasn’t so great. After that it started to get crowded. We made our way over to the dancing area which was enourmous, maybe a few football fields. Some people had started dancing; we didn’t stay too long after that because it was so crowded, and I was feeling uncomfortable with that many people around. Even trying to get out of there in a rickshaw took forever to get down the road because there was so much traffic!

Navratri at CEPT

Here are some pictures of the Navratri decorations at CEPT

I wish I could post the videos of the dancing, but the internet just can't handle it. Even small videos take forever and with the internet losing connectivity then I have to start over.