Navratri

October 8th to October 16th are the dates for this year's observance of Navratri. The name of the holiday literally means "nine nights" in Sanskrit. In the most general terms, this holiday is when people do puja to Durga, the goddess.

I'm told that there are a lot of variations in the myths and customs surrounding Navratri in the various parts of India. Here in Pune, everything is open later at night, and there are more people selling balloons, food, etc., than usual. On the first night, there were also some fireworks.

People have set up what look like stages with lots of decoration and painted plaster statues on them for about a week or so in advance.


There also seems to be an increased sale in the flower garlands used for puja.




Also, in the photo at the bottom, there's a tractor pulling one of these stage setups down the main highway while several men are sitting on it. This is the sort of thing that is seen only here in India.