Happy Navaratri! It’s Day 3, and while I’m a little late to the party, I wanted to share a few pictures of our beautiful Golu display. I began thinking about how our puja rituals and festive traditions have evolved over the last 15 years.
One of the most striking changes is how color has come to dominate our celebrations. I have no memory from my childhood of being told a specific color to wear for weddings or pujas. Yet today, color codes are the norm. For these nine nights of Durga Puja, a specific color is assigned to each day, and my society's WhatsApp group diligently reminds us every morning. This practice isn't limited to Navaratri; it's everywhere—from marriages to baby showers. I grew curious: how did this all begin?
My first guess was that it was a brilliant business idea from our Gujarati or Marwari communities, always innovative in creating new avenues for sales. To be honest, I'm still not entirely convinced they weren't involved! However, my research led me to a far more unexpected source. The trend was apparently sparked by a Marathi newspaper's marketing strategy to revive its sales. Isn't that fascinating? A newspaper advertisement has successfully woven itself into the cultural fabric of India.
But while the sea of vibrant, coordinated ethnic wear adds undeniable joy to our festivities, it casts a shadow we often ignore: overconsumerism.
Our faith and devotion never required nine different colored outfits. This marketing-turned-tradition has, however, created an unspoken obligation. In urban and semi-urban India, we now purchase far more ethnic wear just to keep up. In a country with our population, this fuels a cycle of overconsumption and contributes to a mountain of waste.
This leads to some uncomfortable questions every Indian woman should consider. How many times do we actually re-wear the sarees, lehengas, and anarkalis we buy for each festive season? What happens to them when the trend or the year is over? Many modern Indian women, even senior citizens, don't wear sarees daily, yet our wardrobes are overflowing.
Is this consumption harming our planet? Are we making the best use of our resources? When these clothes end up in landfills, they contribute to the very global warming we read about. Just because our purchasing power has increased, our consumption has multiplied, perhaps at an even faster rate.
As we move forward, from one generation to the next, this trend only seems to be accelerating. It forces us to ask: where is this path leading us and what kind of future are we celebrating?
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