Culture & Food of Mahesana, Gujarat

There are festivals in India, and then there is Navratri in North Gujarat. This nine-night celebration of the Goddess — known here primarily as Amba Mata or Bhavani Mata — transforms Mahesana district from a quiet agricultural hub into one of the most electrifying, colour-saturated, music-drenched places on the face of the earth. If you have the opportunity to be in Mahesana during Navratri (which falls in October or early November according to the Hindu lunar calendar), do not pass it up under any circumstances. It is, by common consensus, one of the most joyful and spectacular mass cultural events anywhere in the world.

The festival begins at dusk each evening, when the sun sets and the sacred space of the Garba grounds is ritually prepared. Women — and increasingly men, too, though the tradition is primarily feminine — arrive dressed in their finest chaniya cholis: layered, full-skirted ensembles of silk, brocade, or mirror-work cotton in colours that seem to have been chosen specifically to out-compete a rainbow. The embroidery on these garments can represent many hours of skilled handwork, passed down through generations of women who stitch these intricate patterns as both craft and devotion.

The Garba itself is performed in concentric circles around a central lamp or image of the goddess. At its simplest, it consists of three steps and three claps, the entire circle moving in a graceful, coordinated sweep that creates a visual pattern of extraordinary beauty when viewed from above. But North Gujarat's Garba tradition includes dozens of variations — from the simple folk forms danced in village squares to the elaborate, athletically demanding Garba styles developed for competition in recent decades, in which teams of young women execute sequences of breathtaking precision and speed.

The musical accompaniment to Garba has evolved significantly over the past few decades. Traditional Garba was sung a cappella or with the accompaniment of the dhol (double-headed drum), the tasha (small drum), and the shehnai (wooden oboe). In urban and semi-urban areas today, live bands — combining traditional dhol-tasha with synthesizers, harmoniums, and amplified vocals — perform the Garba songs that have become the soundtrack of every Gujarati's autumn memories. Yet in the villages around Mahesana, the older, unaccompanied forms of Garba singing — with their haunting modal melodies and devotional texts — can still be heard, particularly in the earlier hours of the evening before the amplified music begins.

Dandiya Raas — the partner dance with decorated wooden sticks, typically performed in the later hours of the Navratri nights — has a different character from Garba: more percussive, more athletic, and more socially interactive. Partners face each other and strike their sticks together in increasingly complex rhythmic patterns as the music accelerates, swapping partners in a rotating formation that allows everyone to dance with everyone else over the course of the night. The Dandiya Raas became internationally famous following its prominent feature in several Bollywood films, but experiencing it live in North Gujarat is incomparably more visceral and joyful than any filmic representation can convey.

What makes Navratri in North Gujarat uniquely powerful is not any single element but the totality of the experience — the physical sensation of being part of thousands of people moving in synchronised rhythm, the visual overwhelm of a sea of colour and glitter under festival lights, the smell of incense and street food, the sound of drums and devotional songs, and the particular emotion of a community coming together in collective joy and reverence that transcends ordinary social boundaries. For the nine nights of Navratri, Mahesana becomes something close to paradise — and no visitor who has experienced it ever quite forgets it.

Religion in Mahesana is not a Sunday affair or a private matter — it is woven into the texture of daily life with an intimacy and naturalness that can be initially surprising to visitors from more secular backgrounds. The city wakes to the sound of temple bells and the recitation of morning prayers; the day is structured around multiple prayer times; the agricultural and commercial calendar is organised around festival dates; and the social life of the community revolves, in large part, around the temple complex as a shared communal space.

Hinduism dominates the religious landscape of Mahesana, with a particularly strong devotion to the Goddess in her various forms — Amba Mata, Umiya Mata, Khodiyar Mata — reflecting the deep-rooted tradition of Shakti worship that characterises Gujarat's religious culture. The nine nights of Navratri are, at their core, a devotional festival honouring the Goddess — and the dancing and celebration that makes Navratri so spectacular is understood by participants not as entertainment but as a form of worship, an offering of the body's energy and the community's joy to the divine feminine.

The Jain community of Mahesana, while numerically smaller than the Hindu majority, exercises a cultural influence disproportionate to its size — as it has throughout Gujarat's history. The Jain philosophical principles of ahimsa (non-violence toward all living beings) and aparigraha (non-possessiveness) have shaped the vegetarian culture of the entire region, making Gujarat one of the world's most consistently and comprehensively vegetarian societies. Many of the Jain businessmen of Mahesana maintain strict dietary observances — refusing not just meat, fish, and eggs, but also root vegetables (which cannot be harvested without killing the plant) — a form of dietary ethics that has influenced Gujarati cuisine as a whole.

For visitors, engaging with Mahesana's spiritual life is both easy and enormously rewarding — provided it is done with respect and sensitivity. Most temples are open to visitors of all faiths during the morning (6–11 AM) and evening (5–8 PM) prayer times; the atmosphere of a Gujarati temple at dawn — the fragrance of incense and fresh flowers, the sound of brass bells and Sanskrit chanting, the warmth of devotees moving through their morning rituals — is one of the most peaceful and beautiful experiences available to the traveller in North Gujarat. Dress modestly (shoulders and knees covered), remove shoes at the temple entrance, and observe the devotional activities without interrupting them, and you will find that temple visits become one of the most memorable parts of your time in Mahesana.