GUYANESE and other Hindus in the US observed the auspicious festival of Navratri, the annual festival that pays obeisance to the universal mother, from September 28 thru October 5 culminating with Dussehra on Thursday. According to Hindu values, it is the mother who provides her children with sustenance and as such she is propitiated.
Navratri is one of the holiest periods in the Hindu calendar that is accompanied with fasts and sacrifices over nine days and a time when Hindus perform special poojas at home and or in the mandirs to purify their minds and bodies. In spite of the difficulties of life in America, Hindus make time to visit their temples and to conduct poojas at home just as they would do in their home country, Guyana. People tend to pray during this period with great fervour and devotion.
Temples were packed with worshippers during the nine nights especially on the final evening when little girls representing the Devis in Hindu worship were honoured in Kumari pooja.  It is an extremely wonderful festival, highly inspiring and instructive on how people should live.
There are several meanings attached to the celebration of Navratri which is directly linked to other Hindu festivals like Ram Leela, Dussehra, and Diwali around this time of the year. One meaning given for Navratri is nine nights which connotes worshipping of the Goddess Durga and her two feminine (Lakshmi and Saraswati) transformations.  Each is worshipped for three nights to offer protection, provide wealth and guide the devotee to knowledge.
“Nav”  also means new and Navratri is observed twice a year to mark the coming of the two new seasons — spring and fall.  People pay obeisance to the universal
mother for long and healthy life and prosperity and protection during the new seasons.
According to pundits, during Navratri, a devotee becomes conscious of his/her faults, limitations and internal enemies such as lust, hatred, greed and anger and want to reform his life. People make sacrifices in their fast so they can become conscious of their faults and correct them. By worshipping Durga and her sisters, these internal enemies are destroyed and are replaced by love, cheerfulness, compassion, and devotion making the person a new individual.
As in Guyana, Guyanese invited priests to conduct poojas in their homes and/or visited the temples where the pandits narrated the thrilling episodes of the ‘Ramayana’. Pandit Rajin Balgobin conducted a nine-night katha at Prem Bhakti Mandir in Jamaica. Devotees chanted the holy name of Rama and celebrated the return of Goddess Sita from the shackles of the evil Rawan. Worshippers fasted for the entire period, offering jaal or dhar which is a mixture of curd, milk, honey, sugar, cloves, tills, and other sweet spices at a sacred place in their home or yard to a lingum – their mandir.  At poojas, worshippers make offerings of prasadam (with sugar cane, lapsey with puri, fruits, flowers, bail, tulsi and paan leaves, other paraphernalia such as sandal paste, and chandan, and burned incenses (agarbati, gugul, cloves, camphor, Kasturi) at the feet of the universal mother and Lord Rama.  After pooja, there is bhojan or the feeding of the worshippers, a unique tradition of Hindus.
The Pundits’ Katha along with the singing of Bhajans and kirtan and the playing of music gave fulfilment of the devotees religious aspirations. But it is not enough to think of God only during Navratri.   People need to make daily sacrifice and to permanently live a decent life and be kind to others.