Written By: Anshul banker                                                                                                                કથાબીજ : નરેન જાડકિયા

Love, what is it? All of us are dead, even when we have a life. We need some fuel to run this life, for some that fuel is passion and for some love. Most of us are blessed with a family which makes us realize that we are loved and capable of loving. That is the greatest gift we can give to any human being as we filling up their fuel tank which helps them accelerate through their one and only lives. For some this fuel tank is filled by their parents, for some friends, brothers, sisters and for some god. To express the love for god, there’s this noteworthy festival on the ninth day of Navratri in a small village of Gujarat called Rupal. This festival is called Palli.

PALLI

Palli is a huge wood carving made out of the “Khijada” tree on the same day. It has a stand on the end to lift it. The holy fire is kept at five place. One at the top and the other four at the corners. There are no wheel on the bottom of the palli to move it. There are around ten to twenty people who drag it. To make their work easier there’s ghee or clarified butter on the floor. Last year, there was around 500,000 litres of ghee on the floor and millions of people contributed to make that happen. People take out the palli from the middle of the village and stop it at 27 spots. The ghee is also poured on the palli. The event started around 5:30 in the morning and moved through the entire village. Everyone took blessings from the holy fire.

TAKING BLESSINGS FROM THE HOLY FIRE

After the event is over and the Palli has gone through the entire village, people collect all the leftover ghee which is on the floor and sell it to the people around entire Gujarat at a cheaper price.

COLLECTING GHEE AFTER THE END OF THE EVENT

So if you wondered that why are all the sweets at a discounted price, now you know why. This filling up of the fuel tank of the believers happens once a year and only in the village of Rupal, nowhere else. The village looks immaculate, filled with fairy lights and a lot of temples.

ખીજડા નું ઝાડ જ્યાં અર્જુન નું ગાંડીવ છુપાવેલું

પલ્લી પર ચઢાવવામાં આવતું ઘી

માતાજી ની પાલખી ખેંચી શકાય તેના માટે ઘી  ની નદી વહેવડાવે

રૂપાલ ની પલ્લી

If we look around India, there are different types of celebrations for these nine-day festival of Navratri. In Gujarat it is celebrated with Ras- garba, In Bengal with Durga puja, in north  Vaishnodevi puja. Even in Gujarat also, there is a local version of celebration like rupal ni palli , pavagadh parikrma, mata no madh ….etc.

Many times people argue that these different celebrations have their own artistic flavor. Because of these different type of artworks, it shows more of our culture, not religion. But actually when we think about all our festival celebration…The entire culture of this festival is based on religion. In fact any culture in the world is based on religion but not a single religion borne out of culture.  This is so true…that is why we see major difference of culture in different parts of world….it is entirely dependent on our religion & religion based beliefs. IT IS NOT ABOUT CULTURE OR RELIGION….BUT IT IS OUR RELIGIOUS CULTURE.