Navratri/Garba – October 2010
Croydon High School – South London
The other day I Googled ‘Best garba London’ and my site came up on the first page, but it was this post – http://www.tanya-n.com/?p=19 – which is from India in 2006 (one of my first posts!). That was the first time I photographed the Navratri Festival and it was absolutely brilliant. The scale of this festival is far grander in India than it is in the UK, but it is still widely celebrated and many local town halls and schools host the festival throughout the country, which lasts for 9 days.
I photographed the 8th day at a Hindu Lohana community-led event at Croydon High School in South London.
Navratri is a large Hindu festival celebrating the Goddess Durga, and the tradition is to dance in circles around an idol of the goddess. The actual dancing itself is called Garba, a Gujarati form of dancing.
It’s a very colourful event and a great opportunity for girls to wear their brightest and best Garba outfits.
These plates were designed by members of the community as part of a competition to see who can create the best ones. They are used in a Hindu ritual called an Aarti where wicks soaked in ghee are lit on the plate which is then offered to the deities, while clapping and singing.
Some of them were really quite beautiful and intricately designed.
The beauty of a wide-angle lens! I used a 10-22mm for these ground shots.
A judge inspects the Aarti plates.
Some of the winners and runner-ups:
Preparations are made for the Aarti itself:
The overall winner of the competition:
During the Aarti, some women (generally of older generations) get what’s called ‘Mataji’. I’m not quite sure how to describe it but it’s almost as though they become possessed (by the goddess supposedly) and they start clapping and moving to the music. Surprisingly I couldn’t find much information about it online..
Garba dancing is great fun. Sticks are also used as part of the dancing, and there are various styles and moves – depending on how adventurous you want to be.
Prasad (usally Indian sweets, fruit, nuts etc.) is offered to worshippers upon leaving.
Navratri is just one many of the annual colourful festivals in the Hindu calendar but probably the most vibrant in terms of the ceremonies and dancing involved.
Thanks for looking, as always : )
I had a roll of film developed that had been in my camera for the last 3 months.
Kodacolor 200 film – Nikon F3 – 50mm f1.8
A reminder of summer.. and England’s somewhat dire performance in the World Cup.
A snapshot of classy Croydon:
Surely the world’s busiest shop aka Primani aka Primark on Oxford Street, taken from a bus:
I cannot go into this place without instantly feeling claustrophobic.
Queen. The world’s friendliest pit-bull.
East London
No – I haven’t seen Banksy although I’ve seen a lot of wannabes ; )
Spitalfields in East London always has something going on, whether it’s quirky markets, or musicians performing, or in this case, people dancing to a jazz band.
A great way to spam for free – simply write it across the wall:
BBBBand.. I checked out their myspace page and their music isn’t as bad as their graffiti, but that doesn’t mean it’s great either.
@jimeh:
He took this shot of me, in all my photographic glory:
The most incredibly random jumble sale:
You get given a plastic bag and you can fill it up with as many items for a tenner!
Switching back to the easy, auto comfort of digital!
Brick Lane – definitely the most featured street on this site. I should create a new category for it!
Someone clearly doesn’t appreciate dubstep pioneer Skream (who is fab I’d like to point out, if you’re into that kind of music):
Superman/boy reappears!
The moose head is a nice touch:
A great piece as usual by Jef Aerosol:
I don’t know why, but I like the focusing on this:
A part of East London I had never seen before:
It was pretty much a derelict area surrounded by housing estates – literally the kind of place you’d see on documentaries about run-down parts of the city.
Jim had fun with the random pile of tyres we stumbled across under a bridge. It’d be a great location for a shoot – if anyone ever discovered it!
East London really is random.
A kid who started shouting at us for some reason..
.. so I took his picture, as one does. As we started to walk away more of them appeared and began shouting so we decided to walk a bit faster and leave as quick as possible! It’s quite sad when you end up fearing a bunch of 10 year olds.
More of East London to follow on another roll of film, which will hopefully take less than 3 months to complete : )
On a completely different topic – my book on India is almost finished! Quick ‘preview’:
I didn’t realise shortlisting my own images would be such a difficult task. Watch this space for more details..
