The Story of Navratri, Durga & The Different Colours | Indian Festivals for Kids

0:00 hi guys for everybody who's joined in we want to also thank you for the amazing support that y'all have given us on our reading challenge it has been fantastic we are opening wait list for reading challenge number two and i know a lot of you guys have sent in fabulous feedback i'm sure a lot of you guys even saw it in our comments uh in our stories and all that so if you're curious what it is all about uh then

0:23 well it's very very simple it is uh you know it's our module our summer fun factory module which we've actually curated for um for for children to get get more readers right so whether it is the mistakes you make while raising a reader or best books which are india based and includes indian authors which are age-wise or a creative writing course all of it exists in some fun factory so we really want all of you guys to go check that out if

0:52 you've enjoyed the reading challenge so much there's no way that you're not going to love summer fun factory today we're chatting with um with nalini ramchandran and she is going to be talking to us on relevance of durga stories for today's kids hey nalini so nice to see you yes hi hi nothing i was just telling all our audience that it is so strange that i have celebrated as a child and until date you know as

1:19 gujaratis we get a little matka and we celebrate it each year but i have no uh understanding of why it is done because like you know we just seen our parents do it our mothers do it but there is no reason uh if i have to tell my kids why we do it uh i don't know if i have to explain the nine the nine goddesses perhaps i don't know um and obviously the biggest question that a lot of

1:45 people have is how is this relevant to our children and you know here they want to talk about um they want to talk about harry potter and not about the nine goddesses and things like that right so how do you make it relevant how do you make mythology and indian uh you know the indian gods and goddesses as relevant stories for them more than anything else so thank you so much and i'm really really excited to read the book uh

2:11 perhaps hopefully this weekend but tell me how did you chance upon writing this and tell us a little bit about yourself okay so um before this i uh worked on a book uh uh titled lore of the land storytelling traditions of india right okay that's great while working on that i realized that a lot of our stories are not just you know fiction or pigments of imagination but it's actually lore that has been passed on from generation to

2:42 generation so that is how i think somewhere uh my understanding of mythology is also slightly different because i try to find connections between what the stories are and what we are trying to do uh today in terms of not just you know festivals but even the way we live sometimes so um our whole belief system is somewhere you know hooked on to these stories latched on to these stories so that was

3:13 somewhere the origin of how the book should be written and i think the most important aspect like you yourself have mentioned um most people celebrate navratri but they don't really understand why they do certain things why some customs or traditions are followed what is the significance and i think the primary um idea was that a lot of children especially girls they are a part of the

3:43 festival through this particular ritual called kanya puja you know so they get invited to people's homes and have these yummy foods they get gifts in return they're very happy with the whole thing but there is very little understanding of why it happens what the people are uh you know may be worshiping them for so those questions i think it was more and more of an attempt to answer questions that children would possibly ask

4:15 during a festival uh like navratri so tell me how do you think one one is that you know you said a very relevant point about we get invited as unmarried young girls to uh you know go to uh go to people's homes for kanya puja so what is the relevance of kanya puja and what's the relevance of navratri there are many stories about why navratri is celebrated i think the most common of all is the understanding that uh

4:42 durga slayed the asura mahisha on i mean for she battled him for nine days and that is why it's you know nine nights and that is why it is navratri and the tenth day is her victory over evil so that is the shera so i think this is the most common story that everyone uh tends to repeat also but there is a lot more um that goes into celebrations uh and a lot of like many of these traditions you know

5:12 so you were just mentioning that as gujarati uh you had this uh we got it we get a colorful matka and we do that every day you know there is a significance for that and a lot of it is uh so i'm just going to show you i don't know yeah yeah that's the garbage right i think every aspect of navratri is important and the celebration is not just about nine days and victory over good or good and evil and you know those

5:44 kind of things but it's i think uh about a lot of qualities that durga as a goddess uh symbolizes so i somewhere in traditional mythology we are so used to viewing uh durga as maybe you know the mother or the daughter or um you know the partner or something like that so there is always this um male god and she is the counterpart of you know

6:15 the male god so in it it's either as the mother of karthikeya or the partner of shiva you know so somewhere i realized that narrative had to change so the significance if we are talking about how mythology is relevant today it is in changing that narrative obviously the sacredness or you know the traditional um ideas will always be there but somewhere uh instead of just calling shayla putri who is worshipped on the first day you know she is the first

6:46 avatar of the yeah so instead of just calling her uh the daughter of uh the king of the himalayas or something like that i think uh in my book i made her i've given her a particular particular quality and i've tried to say that she's more of an adventure seeker so things don't happen to the goddess in my book like she takes decisions she takes us you know that that is the difference and that is how it will be relevant because

7:17 the stories the parents are going to tell will also change if the narrative changes yeah i think that is so important because you know when we are always talking to mythology there are very few characters where women are taking chance and control of their life it's more that they just followed or they did this in due course right uh so i feel like it's a very very uh relevant bit that you are adding because i think that is

7:44 that in itself will lend a lot to uh you know parents wanting to share their shade share that with today's children uh also tell me what is the relevance of the colors like everybody is saying yeah so from whatever a little i have understood i think this is something that began with a particular calendar

8:18 so i think they wanted to add their own uh zing to the whole festival and they started coming out with this list of colors that people would follow so somewhere i think it began with maharashtra and maharashtrians you know beginning the whole color thing and slowly the colors got associated with the goddess of the day but it changes every year so uh that is i think you know it's a very fun thing because uh people love colors and even

8:47 the goddess loves the colors so i think you know so there is no religious significance of the colors no i as far as i know i don't think there is any religious significance but of course you can always you know marry the whole mythology part of it and color a theory part of it and say oh but you know yellow means brightness happiness kind of thing blue is calmness whoa i mean you can do those but it's not

9:12 really uh yeah you know there's no rule that this is what right and where did fasting come about like navratris has become such an important fasting culture like what is the role of that fasting for nine days with um it's the with the original story so there is uh okay so i think uh on the second day of navratri there is an avatar of the goddess who is called brahmacharya and it's very interesting

9:44 because uh nalini i love the illustrations i know they're very they're very beautiful i think the illustrator has joined us i'm sure she's around yes so brahmachary uh her story itself is about how she meditated and fasted for many many many years and it's a very interesting story because her avatar comes immediately after the princess avatar the sheila putri avatar of the goddess so you know i think that is also another important thing that

10:15 parents could use while speaking to kids about the stories so those concepts are not you know they're out loud in my writing but i think it's very much they're hidden for people who understand so right after her uh role or her phrase as the princess she immediately goes to the himalayas and she gives up everything her cushy life everything so i think somewhere those conversations can also come about about how you can live with a lot and how you can also

10:45 learn to live with nothing uh yeah so coming back to the story that was just uh um but uh yeah so uh brahmacharyani she fasted and uh there is another folk uh tale from punjab which explains about how the people over there were denied food by certain uh demons and so durga comes and fights and along with the deputy she also fasts for those nine days you know and i think on the last day after she

11:14 has vanquished the demon all of them have a hearty meal so there are a lot of these stories that connect but nobody has really you know dug them out and tried to find connections there is no um again you know you can never be sure that this is the story that led to this particular avatar or something but yeah that's how it is tell me something how do you understand and if you can help us understand the

11:40 different uh names or different ways that navratri is celebrated across different states of india and and how they have their own stories of it so i think that was one of the most challenging parts of writing the book because there are so many celebrations how do you decide what to put into the book and what to leave out so what i have done is i have kept the ones that are either popular or extremely lesser known

12:07 so we wanted to balance it out so that you know uh parents also get an idea that oh this also happens because a lot of navratri visually is just connected with either garba or this kali puja in kolkata so a lot of the other celebrations get left out or people don't know about them so i think that is how the whole uh there's so in the book there is something called the navratri box where

12:38 i have put in uh specific uh uh traditions from around the uh so i think there's also something called the golu puja and then i think they have two dolls that they get married if i'm not mistaken yeah is that the same time uh yeah golu happens in uh south india especially tamil nadu so it's a decorative doll decoration you have a number of steps and on each step you have all these mycological or religious dolls

13:10 who are assembled and each row basically tells a story but again that is also connected to the sixth avatar of the navadorga the one who slays mahisha so uh the bit about golu is that you know when uh all the powers from the gods and goddesses went to uh katyani so that she could slay mahisha they just turned into dolls now this was something that even i hadn't uh heard of but i knew that golu was practiced and even at my

13:41 grandparents place you know we had gulu celebrations etc but i have never heard that was the reason that uh started the whole uh practice or the tradition so you know so these are the stories that i've tried to find and put into the book and uh yeah a lot many times i think the north east gets left out in books even that even the ones that are set to concentrate on india but you know the northeast gets left out so

14:11 we have made an attempt to put in something from the northeast as well so wow that's incredible so tell me the nine days and the nine names of the nine goddesses that we actually celebrate yeah so there is on the first day you have shayla putri on the second day you have brahmacarini on the third day you have chandraghanta on the fourth day you have kushmanda on the fifth you have skandamata on the sixth you have katyayani on the seventh

14:42 you have karl rathri on the eighth maha gowdy and on the ninth it is siddhi that the 21st century kids they know they're so enamored by everything else as parents we need to make them uh if we need to make indian mythology relevant to them indian gods and goddesses relevant to them what would be your top three or four qualities that you would attribute to durga top three would be uh i would say uh strength firstly i think

15:12 it's the most obvious not just uh physical strength but mental and emotional strength also uh second would be uh kindness uh and third i think i would say a concern for nature i don't know if i can uh count it as a quality but i think important right and um what are the if i was to do a little uh trivia for all our audience about the weapons that she carried and the animals she sits on

15:42 let's see who gets uh who i i don't think i'm uh bit to do that because i may get many answers wrong but maybe you should do that and let's see who responds fastest how many vahanas of uh durga and her forms can you just name as many as you can think of how many uh weapons does durga hold and what do they stand for any idea about the significance of the weapons because each of them also has a particular

16:10 symbolism any idea how durga got her name wow these are really interesting questions i wish i could like run and call my daughter because my younger one loves mythology and i'm sure she'll be able to answer these better than me actually because she reads a lot more but nalini this was incredible i think uh i i think it's going to be very very interesting for all of us to kind of share this with our children and if you

16:33 can just before we conclude walk us through a few of the key qualities of the book and what i'll have you manage to fit in that'll be incredible as brief as possible it the book begins with the story of durga goes on to the introduction of the navadorgam and then there are separate chapters that take you through each of these forms and i'll just quickly try and show you something so for example uh let's just look at uh sheila putri

17:01 because today is the first day so you know this would be the story it begins with the story of shayla putri and we have these beautiful illustrations which priyanka has worked on and we've done something very uh different this time so we have speech balloons so that kids and parents can do something like a read aloud and uh the kids can get into the boom of the avatar you know that would be interesting and then there are tiny

17:29 labels because we just wanted to make a lot of the reading very light and easy it needn't be verbose right so uh that and then yeah so this is the durga box where one particular quality of that particular avatar has been mentioned uh i think this is the most important uh or the core idea of the book because uh this is what is going to make the book relevant to kids today a lot of these um you know

18:00 strengths have to be inculcated or they'll have to find their inner strength and i think this this box is going to help them do that uh below that we go into either a story related to the tradition that is connected with that avatar that also will have labels and stuff again illustrations labels and finally we have something called the navratri box which talks about one tradition that is connected to the avatar and i've also put in footnote

18:31 so that if there are you know difficult terms or mythological words or stories or concepts that parents want to explain they can do it quite easily let me ask you this question because we get a lot of this question on kid stop press which is how do you make reading exciting for children who would say firstly let the kids be themselves let them pick what they want to read a lot many times i know that you know parents tend to wear

18:57 towards mythology for various reasons it's a good thing but uh in that case then you have to sit with them and read along with them also if you are not someone who reads it's going to be difficult to expect them to sit down and read you know so that is one thing uh how do you make it exciting a lot of people do a lot of these fun activities so pick out you know concepts from the

19:19 book and maybe have discussions with them uh try and plan activities around the book um gift the book to their friends or other kids in the family so that the kids can have some kind of a discussion uh you know there is scope for discussion in that sense and uh yeah i think just keep it simple don't get into this whole thing about oh so and so is reading this book so you should also do it no never do that i

19:47 mean it's just you know too much of a burden for the kids but yeah i think activities read along with the kid uh make it fun a lot of times movies uh based on books uh are also you know out so maybe you could just watch the films with them and then have a discussion of how something changed or what changed between the narratives and stuff like that so yeah we have even in this book we have put in a lot of concepts that

20:14 can be discussed since you were talking about the significance of colors i think i should mention that the significance of colors comes in this particular avatar called maha gowdy and although we have stuck to the whole colors and colorful aspects somewhere we've also taken the opportunity to talk about uh fairness and skin tone and colorism so uh yeah it's really really yeah

20:44 that's that's a very very interesting concept especially in times like today right where there's so much of insensitivity uh towards so many things that i think it's it's great that you mentioned that uh but great thank you so much for being with us today and good luck with the book and i can't wait to read it myself uh and i think that we need more of these stories um and i love the way you articulated it for children

21:10 on different qualities of each of the uh each of the abdas versus just okay this one one over this one or this one did this or this one was the daughter like you were saying of this one and give them their own individual self right so i think that is that's what will help a lot of uh children connect with um you know with the book as well so thank you so much for joining us uh today and

21:35 wish you all the very best of the book thank you thank you so much thank you thank you so much right thank you yeah bye bye