A reunion, a wedding, & a race: Chapter 6 (Garba-Raas)

The wedding to which I refer is an Indian wedding. These are typically multi day affairs filled with ritual, food, and kinship. Depending on religion and part of India, the celebrations will differ. And I am so lucky that my people celebrate on the night before the marriage ceremony, there is a dance party called Garba-Raas. Garba involves dancing in a circle using clapping and hand motions; there are various iterations depending on the beat of the music. Dandia Raas is dancing in pairs or large groups of pairs using sticks called dandia. There are 5 beats that repeat over and over during which you strike your two sticks together or strike your partners sticks; you can add flair depending on the speed of music and your agility. Overall, it is a major optometric workout that is So. Much. Fun. So tonight I went to a Garba Raas on the eve of my cousin’s marriage. And so that’s why this outfit made an appearance. It’s ethnic wear I acquired for my own wedding 17 years ago. I changed the top out for a more modern look. [Sorry for the bad lighting.]  

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s