By What is Navaratri? .
Navaratri is a festival in Hindi meaning nine days. This festival apparently goes on for nine days. It is celebrated in different ways in different countries. This is what we did at our home for Navaratri.
What we did for Navaratri
At our home we kept golu for Navaratri. Golu is when we keep our toys to make something really nice. I made a park. One area was for the animals that live in water. Another area was for herbivores. Then in another area we had all the farm animals. Next to that there were two lions in a cage. One of them was an adult lion and the other one was a baby lion cub the baby lion cub was lying down. A little away from the farm
animals were three birds, two of them were eagle and the other one was a parrot. They were all eating from a small bowl. We also had steps on the top two steps we kept gods then on the bottom two we kept a castle a little puppy and other few things. I also had some spider man toys and don’t think I left them out since them out because I did not I just kept them as guards. (Don’t think that I made this all by myself I got some help from my dad too ☺ ha ha ha!) Near the herbivores there was a beautiful looking dinosaur statue. It was in my second favorite color pink! (My first favorite color red shhhhhh…) on the nine days we invite a family to the puja. We start the puja at about 7:00 some families have kids. When the kids came in my mind I jump up and shout HURRAY! Kids came so I can play after singing mahishasuramardini. If the kids come early we can play before the puja. What is mahishasuramardini? Well one time in the nine days a family came in that there was a kid. She is older than me. She knows some of the mahishasuramardini so she sang with me. There are bits of mahishasuramardini below:
You might notice that there are twenty verses to mahishasuramardini. I am very proud. Do you know why? It’s because my grandmother (Pati) told them in her native language tamil. Guess what I did? I wrote them English. Also I go to Sanskrit class. It goes on every Saturday. I learn a mantra every class. I told the two that I learned. The first one I told was:
Twameva mata cha pita twameva
Twameva bandhu cha saka twameva
Twameva vidya dravena twameva
Twameva sarvam mama deva deva
The other one is:
Sarva mangala mangalye –Siva sarvarta sateka
Sharanye Trimbaka gouri –Narayani namostuta
You should learn these mantras. They are very melodious and have devotional music so much that I can’t stop singing them. They bring peace and love into your heart. If you are singing them with your eyes closed and thinking about god you feel you are getting blessed by the chance to see god in real life. Not a dream, but in real life. The best feeling you can ever get.
So this is what we did at our home for Navaratri. Enjoy the Video below 🙂
