Authored by: Vineet Mittal, Chairperson, Avaada Group
The advent of each season and the festivity to announce its arrival are a beautiful set of events that define sustainability and how to attain it. All Indian festivals are connected to this aspect of sustainability and Navaratri is one such festival celebrated for ten days and nine nights. Navratri starts when the season changes, which has a vivid effect on one’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. The festivities during these days enable us to tune our creative energies and rejuvenate our physical and mental beings to sustain and grow.
Navratri is a Sanskrit term where ‘Nav’ translates to ‘nine’ and ‘Ratri’ to ‘night’. Also known as Durga Puja, this festival comes five times a year: Chaitra Navratri, Gupta Navratri, Sharada Navratri, or Maha Navratri, Paush Navratri, Magha Navratri. Among these, Chaitra Navratri and Sharada Navratri are the most popular. This 9-night, 10-day festival bears high religious, spiritual, and cultural significance.
Navratri is celebrated to mark the victory of Dharma (Good) over Adharma (Evil). The nine days symbolize nine avatars of Goddess Durga, with each day dedicated to one incarnation. Worshiping the nine avatars leads to better control and purification of self – eliminating bad with sustainable good.
The very divine power controlling the universe and celestial bodies making our mother earth revolve around the Sun, resulting in day and night, climate change, and weather alterations creating the right habitat for sustaining life. We worship this energy as Mother Goddess and imbibe the sustainable values of life – cleanliness, purity, respect, and gratitude with chakras and nadis being purified. These defining values of happiness, forgiveness, and fulfilment make the world relook, rethink, and repurpose one and existence to make sustainability a default feature of ‘being’.
Goddess Durga is the cosmic mother – mother of all creations, full of love and compassion. She represents the three worlds: the gross physical world, the mental world and the transcendental cosmic world. She resides in every atom in this universe in the form of material, energy and consciousness. She is also one with Shiva – the essence of all auspiciousness.
The festival of Navaratri has around ten scientific and spiritual themes of significance; it is time to rise to integrate and harmonize nine chakras of mind and body and the conscious with the ultimate source of divine power. Navratra is related to the equinox, nice chakras, nine mantras, fasting prayer, meditations, virtues, festivals, nature, and colors.
Navratri signifies victory of good over evil, embracing the spirit of joy and oneness, and leaving behind all that is limiting and hindering our growth as spiritual beings. It is a time when our internal hormonal and inner transformations happen in the body which affect different biological cycles, which leads to making new relationships and reviving old associations with all new energy.
We imagine a world where the sun powers our lives and the wind lifts our dreams. We are a social enterprise. The decarbonization of the planet, carbon sinks, and nurturing solar energy are not just terms of science for us; they are deep-rooted phenomena that have a bearing on everything we do and create on Mother Earth. Sustainability is about the purity of the soul and living and Navratra is the special occasion to transform negative energies of life into positive energies, connecting to the roots and rejuvenating the soul.
There have been stark realizations, too; what we considered necessities were actually niche and luxury. Simply put, sustainability was always there in the form of festivities, meditation, simple living, and respecting our resources. It is just that, somewhere in between, we lost the purpose and the endeavor.
Every circle around the Sun leads to a slow change on this Earth and in our environment. And to mark this change, every living and non-living thing on Mother Earth has adapted to be sustainable. It is this uniqueness of the events in nature blended with festivities like Navratri that helps us realize the true meaning of sustainability. We have a dream to make energy a resource and sustainability a purpose.
Authored by: Vineet Mittal, Chairperson, Avaada Group
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