Dhol Baaje

My favourite festival, and nostalgia for a simpler time

If you are an Indian living anywhere in the United States except New Jersey, you probably miss celebrating Indian festivals.

Holi is not Holi when you’re not allowed to throw water in public. People with backyards can light fuljhadis and anaars on Diwali, but the heart yearns for some noise pollution. You don’t get ukdiche modak on Ganesh Chaturthi, unless you are the enterprising type who makes them at home (in which case, please contact me).

But the festival I miss the most, without question, is Navratri.

The colony where I lived as a child organised three Garba-Dandiya nights every year during Navratri. My friends and I would be excited days in advance, planning which ghagra choli to wear on which day and practising steps in our evening play time.

Each night started with slow Garba songs—Lili Lemdi Re, Pankhida, Ghode Becho Na (I know that last one can’t be right, but that’s what I thought the words were). We danced in a huge rotating circle that stretched from C Block to D Block, everyone doing the same simple steps. But some characters had a will of their own. The lady who ran a beauty parlour from her house was particularly prone to dancing as if she had her eyes closed, and couldn’t see what anyone else was doing.

Childhood Garba was a lot simpler than this. Image source

Dandiya is stressful

At some point, the organiser (let’s call her Rucha aunty) would decide that it was Dandiya time. This information would percolate through the crowd, and we’d scramble to get our dandiyas. Sometimes you would find that somebody had taken your dandiyas, so you’d take somebody else’s dandiyas. It was a simple time.

Dandiya was stressful. First of all, everyone had to arrange themselves into not one but two circles, one inside the other. Second, the number of people in the two circles needed to be equal (it never was). Then the two circles had to rotate in opposite directions at the same speed, such that everybody in the inner circle danced one by one with everybody in the outer circle, each pair dancing together for five beats. Even the army of North Korea can’t do this properly for the duration of a Dandiya song. 

Every now and then there would be a missing person in the circle opposite you. This wasn’t too bad—you just had to stand and wait for five beats. What was painful was when there was a missing person in your circle, and you were next to that gap. Then each person you danced with would have been waiting before they danced with you, so you had to make apologetic faces to twenty people in a row, shrugging while dancing to indicate that you didn’t know who was responsible for the mess.

Sorry if that last para was confusing. Dandiya is also confusing. Image source

Then you’d get a fumbling partner who didn’t know the step, and you’d encourage them by dancing with a more instructional vibe, maybe counting ‘one, two, three…’ and one of you would hit the other’s fingers with a dandiya.

Parlour Aunty, of course, would be doing an entirely different step than everyone else, eyes closed in bliss. You could try to decipher her moves and match them, or just let her do her thing and wait to get to the next person. It didn’t matter, because she wasn’t troubled by whether her dandiyas connected with other dandiyas, or pure air.

The stress of doing Dandiya in a big group is worth it, because eventually, you get a few partners in a row who are in sync—neither clueless uncles, nor pro dancers doing complicated moves with disdain for plebeians like you. Then you feel a swing in your step, your ghagra flares out each time you turn, your dandiyas make a perfect ‘thak’ when they hit your partners’. You understand how Parlour Aunty feels.

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Dhol Baaje

Sanjay Leela Bhansali is responsible for 90 percent of Bollywood’s Garba songs (and 100 percent of the GIFs in this post). Dholida, Nagada Sang Dhol and Lahu Munh Lag Gaya all have incredible sets and choreography. But childhood nostalgia ensures that no Garba song will ever beat the 1999 classic Dholi Taro Dhol Baaje.

Dholi Taro was the girls’ song. The whole night, we had tolerated strong-willed aunties and idiot boys and confident didis who leaped around and stepped on our toes. But not for Dholi Taro.

Someone (probably Rucha aunty again) would decide it was time, and we would hear the opening vocals: “Hey khananananana khan khanaaaaaan….” and scream. We had 30 seconds to gather near D Block and make our own small circle. We knew our steps, practised in the evening. Partners were pre-decided. We were ready.

We always did the Dholi Taro hook step. Image source

This song is six minutes and fifteen seconds long, but it always felt too short. The beat would speed up towards the end, and we would abandon the choreography and do fugdi in pairs. At this point, it ceased to be dance and turned into sport—who would last the longest? Holding your partner’s sweaty hands as tight as you could, leaning backwards, turning faster and faster, throwing your head back with laughter, trying to make sure you didn’t crash into anyone— 

The song would end with a ‘dham dham’ and we would collapse, dizzy and delighted.

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Last year, I moved to New York, and decided to check out Navratri in the neighbouring New Jersey. They’ve got their shit sorted, let me tell you. An entire street is blocked off for about one kilometer; the loudspeakers would pass muster at a Dandiya night in Ahmedabad; the New Jersey police try in vain to control the crowd. Being mostly Gujaratis, these dancers move more like the pros than like my friends and I did when we were ten. The band plays traditional Garba songs that start slow and build up speed over fifteen minutes—no Bollywood nonsense.

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The girls who did simple steps on Dholi Taro have spread out around the world now, each involved with our own adult lives. I don’t know if we will ever again meet as a group in the colony where we grew up, but if we do, we should go to D Block and do some fugdi.

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Thank you, Rucha aunty, and the other adults who organised these things, and filled our childhoods with the most precious memories. And thanks to my sister, for inadvertently giving me this writing prompt by asking if anyone had pictures of our Garba-Dandiya nights.