The banquet hall is bright and festive. People of all ages are spinning and dancing, laughing, celebrating. It is the second day of Navratri, the nine day festival that symbolises the triumph of good over evil and that worships feminine divinity.
Almost everything is as you would expect at a garba performance, the dance that takes place in many parts of India on each of the nine nights of Navratri.
If you looked carefully, though, you’d notice that there’s at least one very obvious accoutrement that all the dancers have—they’re all wearing portable headphones.
Darshan Soni, the organiser of this garba performance in Mumbai, has come up with a novel way to extend the duration of the celebration without breaking the laws that require music to be stopped by 10 p.m. He’s put together what he calls “silent dandiya”.
“We were watching Ae dil hai mushkil (Hindi film released last year) and we saw that Break Up song of Anushka (Sharma), so we thought, can we change it to a traditional (garba) theme,” said Soni. “So we decided to go ahead and do it, because anyway there are a lot of complications going on-after 10 pm we cannot play between government and judiciary. So in respect of both, ek raasta toh nikaalna padega (we had to find out a way). So it’s like, break the rule without breaking the law.”
There has been a growing trend of silent disco or silent rave, where people dance to music listened to on wireless headphones. The song, in the Karan Johar movie which inspired Soni, potrayed the same.
The headphones that have been provided to the revelers for the garba in malad have three channels: one with traditional folk music, one with Bollywood music, and the third with electronic dance.
Kishordan Gadhvi, a folk singer from Gujarat, who had performed at the venue before the start of the silent garba, is of the opinion that though the extension of the celebration is a good initiative, people should only dance to the traditional music of the garba.
The garba, Gadhvi said, should be used to worship Goddess Durga, who was called upon by the gods to defeat the demon Mahishasur. The battle that was fought over nine nights culminated in the victory of the goddess, and is celebrated as Dussehra or Vijayadashami.
Choice of music aside, Soni might just have started a trend.
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