2021 – Shilpa's

Navratri ReDefined!

India, the land of mystic, magic, and myth. It’s perpetually impossible to talk about India and not mention the 32 crore gods or maybe more the country worships and the for many that God is Goddess Durga and Navratri is a celebration of and for her.

Navratri literally translates to “nine nights. The mythological stories behind Navratri are nothing short of amazing. India has the holy trinity or as Hindu’s cal it Trimurti. Brahma is the creator of the Universe, Vishnu is the preserver and Shiva is responsible for the change, both as in the form of the destroyer of evil or death and also as in the destroyer of ego. It just so happened that a long time ago, amongst all the good and bliss, there lived a demon called Mahishasur. He wanted to be eternal, so he started praying to Lord Shiva, did penance for years, and finally was granted the boon, that no man or god will ever be able to kill him. Upon receiving the boon, his cruelty knew no limits, he conquered Earth and in his blind arrogance then set his eyes on “Indralok,” the home of the Gods. The Gods were now worried and as you can imagine were furious at Lord Shiva for granting him such a boon. Shiva is also the angry yogi, the one who meditates and when his mediation is broken, is awakened with rage that has no control. From his rage came a bright light that merged with the rays from Vishnu and Brahma, to create this beautiful and absolutely amazing woman. Woman, yes, because remember the boon was “no man or god. The woman came to be called, Shakti meaning strength or power. She possessed the power of all the deities in the heavenly abode. She had one mission, to save the Universe and destroy Mahishasur and all demons.

Goddess Durga — Shakti destroys evil to restore peace on Earth

Gods, all men, created this woman to do the task that they could not. They gave her their strength to save the Earth and the Universe. In a sense, Shakti is the essence of the lords, it is the cosmic energy. She is merciful, knowledgeable, powerful, and bestows her disciples with materialistic grandeur and spiritual freedom. She sits on a lion and has ten weapons. Over time Shakti took nine forms, and every day of Navratri celebrates each manifestation, with the most popular being Goddess Durga. Shakti got the name Durga after she destroyed the demon Durg.

Navratri is mythological India’s Woman’s day celebration.

Personally, for me, my favorite is the 8th day. The eighth day is called Ashtami. It is the day when we celebrate the girl child. Little girls, pure and innocent mortal forms of The Goddesses are welcomed into loving homes. They are pampered with gifts galore and in turn, the little angels shower their giggly blessings and love on the family. Soon these angels grow up and cross the threshold into womanhood. Tradition says they are no longer innocent.

Today, let’s talk about it. The Period.

The Period makes us a woman and yet we choose to shun the very essence of us. The Period is nothing more than pain and discomfort that the female body goes through the majority of her life. Every month she bleeds so when the moment is right she can bring a new life into this world. That’s pretty amazing! It’s a supernatural wondrous quality.

A few years ago, I reinvented Ashtami and chose to celebrate the daughters in my life and not their bodies. My relationship with the Goddess Durga gives me the strength to believe that the Goddess will not punish me for pampering the daughters in my life. She is a woman and she knows the Period gives birth and so it cannot be taboo.

I choose to celebrate their strength, their smile, their giggles, and their hugs.

It is time we the women reinvent faith and beliefs.

It’s time we understand that – The Period is a part of every woman and we all exist because of The Period.

So rightfully, Navratri to me has become the celebration of women. And this year, I did exactly that… Invited my girlfriends and celebrated them with the same glory as I celebrate the daughters. These girlfriends are the Goddesses in my life who make it possible every single day.

As Bhavani, we give birth for if there was no “garbha” or womb, there would be no world. As Parvati, we stand next to our consort through all times, like Annapurna, we feed our family before feeding ourselves, as Saraswati we teach our kids the value of knowledge, as Kali, we fiercely protect all we love, as Laxmi we use the wealth wisely, as Sati and Sita we prove our loyalty in every era.

Navratri celebrates all forms of Shakti, the beautiful one and the scary Kali too, thus telling us women that irrespective of what the world says, YOU are beautiful in your own special way. Every woman has a quality that the other does not have, and when we unite, we are a Shakti that can change the world.

Let us remember that we as women come in all shapes are sizes. We are not born to compete with each other but rather to complement each other and make the world possible.

Be YOU, Be BEAUTIFUL!

I cannot end this post, without showing you a glimpse of the Navratri celebrations in the Indian state of Gujarat. Enjoy!

The sheer numbers are nothing like you have seen in the US. It looks crazy, but trust me there is a beautiful method to the madness here.
A Glimpse of Navratri celebrations in Gujarat.

Goddess Durga on the lion Navratri Celebrations — The Goddess is within the Woman

Dear Student – Hit that Reset Button.

A year of zooming went by fast and yet was excruciatingly slow. If you are feeling tired, then you are not alone. Though tired, you got up every day, turned on your device, and logged into school. You showed up and that’s your success this school year.

2021 was supposed to be a year of hope and yet the sadness of lost ones surrounds them. Every day, gratitude becomes the reason we move forward. Vaccines are now available for 12 years and above. The questions stay but we don’t see any other options so with continued apprehension, we slowly take the first step to get ourselves and our loved ones vaccinated.

2020-2021, will be an excellent school year. We the grown ups, don’t know much, but here’s what we know:

You woke up and did your thing… with resilience and respect. That “thing” was different for all of us, which is okay. As long as you took a step forward every day, you did well. So before you think of the last year as a waste, think about how YOU, showed resilience and weathered a year unlike any other.

Today, you are excited about the possibility of playing in the park with your friends, and we the parents worry about learning loss. Learning loss, you ask quizzically? And you are right. No one knows what this learning loss looks like. For some students, it’ll be missing out on learning pre-algebra, for some it will be the loss of words, for some the loss of muscle strength and for many it will be the loss of social and emotional skills.

Dear Student, talk to your parents, remind them that your brain needs to breathe again. It needs to learn to walk again, run again, talk again, and go crazy again.. once the brain learns to redo these, the academics will come again.

Remind your parents, the best way to reset a device is to shut it down, let it rest, and then turn it on. This summer make the choice to get bored, make pillow forts, hang out with grandma, bake cookies and make a mess, run in the park wild or go for a picnic in the park.

The academic learning loss is an easy fix, the social-emotional grid takes a long time to fix, so this summer, make it about your mental well-being with academics sprinkled in between.

Image about being calm and pressing the reset button

Who is The Empowered Woman?

The Empowered Woman… Who is She? Is there a definition? It’s a question that I think about often. Why? Because I think as women we work hard to mimic empowerment. We are only now learning to approve more than disapprove.

Without much further ado, let us find the perfect woman so we can be her.

Empowered woman; Is she my grandma who woke up at 5.00, went for her walk, bathed, prayed, cooked, and was off to her social work all before 10.00 am? Or maybe she is like my mom, who did all of the above and tutored her and neighboring kids too, or maybe like my mother in law, who though in her 70’s, can devour the WSJ and can hold a conversation on any topic in the world, or maybe she’s like me, who does all of the above and then manages to paint, write blogs, coach, and .. but oh wait… I. know, she has to be the tech woman who left the corporate world to fulfill her dream to be an artist, or the one who chose to follow her dream and become a movie director, maybe she is like my friend, who has a stellar job, a demanding career, and yet does all of what I do? Or maybe the entrepreneur who sells the amazing sarees through FB live and continues to build a sisterhood? Or is the one who is raising a village from scratch by reforming education? No wait, I know she is Z, the lady who comes to my mom’s home and helps her with the household chores, supports a hearing-impaired child, and smiles through life, irrespective of the lemons she keeps catching. What do you think, Is Z the one? Is she the empowered woman?

This blogpost is not about empowering you because you are your own being. In 2019, I was introduced to the beautiful religion of Buddhism by an empowered woman who refused to give in to my sulkiness.

We were four women of very different age groups discussing life and through the discourse, The Buddha is within us. This is a strong and redundant truth, it struck me as one of the most powerful conversations I have had. It also made me realize that the women found this faith through their own sorrows. There were struggles and there were tears, but they didn’t give up. They were seekers and they found a solution for themselves. To me they were putting their life stories in front of a stranger, their courage to be vulnerable was inspiring and their show of vulnerability healed me. They were healers.

From the Suffragette movement to the modern day, there are countless examples of women building each other up through the most dire times. Case in point, a Facebook group called Saree Speak. The women there are phenomenal. Through the shared love and passion for the Indian attire Saree, the women uplift each other, unlike any group I know. It’s a sisterhood of 155K+ women. Complete strangers that compliment each other, uplift each other in hundreds of comments.

There are also many examples of when we the women do everything in our capacity to bring another woman down. When we refuse to see the pain and honesty of another because it conflicts with our own pride and ego. It is also true, that as a woman we come in different strokes for different folks.

It is a choice we make.

I am blessed with not one but multiple villages in my Imperfectly Perfect World. Multiple women and not two alike and yet every one of them empowered in their own might.

To find the empowered woman, all you have to do is, Look at the mirror and you will find her standing there in front of you. YOU are empowered within yourself. You are the seeker, the healer, the applier, the campaigner, the contender, the spoiler, the hearer, the hauler, sometimes even the yeller (and it’s okay,) and you are the giver. So this woman’s day, give yourself permission to just be.

Stand in front of the mirror and smile, because YOU are enough.

Happy Woman’s Day!

This post was inspired by the beautiful truth from Vidya Balan. and the many women I have learned from. Do visit their links above.