Response To "The Nine Day Indian Festival"

The essay "The Nine Day Indian Festival"is about the author's experience at a celebration of the Navratri Festival in New Jersey. The author questioned the Indian quality of "Unity In Diversity," and if this was actually true. Although the author never experienced this in India by attending the festival in New Jersey they began to see this virtue. Commonly when people think of diversity they think about different cultures, different beliefs and different traditions. This exists in diversity but there can also be common grounds or certain aspects of unity. As with the case of the festival, although every region celebrates the Navratri in a different way with different traditions and different celebrations, the idea, history and meaning behind the festival remains the same. Traditions adapt over time sometimes because of outside sources and other unknowns, sometimes because of new ideologies and many other reasons. This essay proved that although almost every region of India had a different way of celebrating the Navratri, all come together, even non-Indians, to celebrate the festival and what it means to oneself.