Yesterday was Vijaya Dashami, and the house is quiet again. Ten days of festival — nine nights of Navaratri and then the tenth, the day of victory — and the morning after always feels like the hall after a wedding: lamps out, a few marigolds still on the floor, everyone a little tired and a little lighter.
Somewhere in the middle of all the greetings, a card came round on WhatsApp. Most festival forwards I scroll past. This one I read twice, because in six lines it said what the ten days were about better than I could have:
The demon is always within.
The goddess is always within.
The battle too, is always within.
And so is the triumph of one, over the other.
Which one, over which one?
That choice is also, somehow always within.
That is the gist of the last ten days, I think. We tell the outer story — Durgā facing Mahiṣāsura for nine nights, Rāma facing Rāvaṇa on the tenth — and the effigies burn in the maidan, and everyone goes home. But the card is right: the story was never really about out there. Every one of us carries a Mahiṣa — the stubbornness, the anger, the heaviness that just will not move — and every one of us carries the Devī who can face it. The festival is ten days of being asked, quite directly, to look within and see which one is winning today.
And that is pretty intense, if you take it seriously. Ten days of looking at your own demons is not a light thing to ask of anyone.
Which is maybe why the festival never asks us to do it sitting still. Look at what Navaratri actually is on the ground: garba and dandiya till midnight, the dhol in Bengal, golu steps full of dolls and songs in the South, music everywhere you turn. I used to think of that as the fun part bolted onto the serious part. Now I think it is the method. You look within, you see what you see — and then the music starts, and you dance, and you let it go. The tradition seems to know that you cannot carry ten days of inner battle without somewhere to put it down.
If you want to sit with the nine nights a little longer, Antara walked through the nine Devīs and the nine grahas earlier this season — one form of the goddess for each night.
The lamps are out now, and the dancing is done. The demon has not gone anywhere, and neither has the goddess — the card says so. So the question I am carrying out of this Navaratri is the card's own: which one, over which one, will I choose tomorrow — on an ordinary Thursday, with no music playing?
विजयादशमी की हार्दिक शुभकामनाएँ 🙏
Heartfelt wishes for Vijaya Dashami.