Gujarat’s most popular public festival Navratri will begin from 30th of September, 2008. As there are only some days left, Gujarat’s Garba Gurus are busy teaching latest and ethnic Navratri skills to die herd Garba fans.

Chetan Dave a Garba Guru who runs ‘Panghat’ group in Ahmedabad says “Coaching of Garba-Ras-Dandiya has begun almost two months before Navratri across Gujarat. This year we have large chunk of Non-Gujaratis who are settled in Gujarat and interested in learning Garba steps. Non-Gujaratis usually visit Garba venues with family driven by curiosity every year but as they don’t know the steps and skills of Gujarati dance they just have to watch the things as spectators. This year many Non-Gujaratis seem disparate to learn the basic steps. They want to perform. Other major group this year is from Non resident Gujarati community. Some NRI Gujaratis have already arrived for preparations of Navratri.”

Talking about Navratri getting bigger and larger every year Chetan says”Due to Narendra Modi’s ‘Vibrant Gujarat Navratri festival’ propaganda and more and more professional organizers jumping in, Navratri is getting bigger and larger every year.”

Micky Christian another Garba Guru in Ahmedabas says “This year we are teaching Garbas on remix songs. We have picked up this trend from recent bollywood movie ‘Rock On’. We have learners from 4 to 55 age range.We teach Non-Gujaratis too. We tell them just three words “Follow the rhythm”. Last year we had coached two foreigners too with same mantra.

Milap Vyas who has his Garba coaching group in Khadia area of wall city Ahmedabad says “If someone is interested in winning ‘best performer’ prizes on the Garba grounds, he/she has to play Garba for 3 hours continuously on each of nine nights. Amazing amount of stamina is needed for this and it comes with practice and only practice. We emphasize on practice with the other things while coaching for Navratri. 60 to 70 people in our group practice everyday for almost one and half hour daily a month before Navratri. We have college goers, housewives, professionals as our students.”

Rates for learning Garba-Ras-Danidya this season are around Rs. 700 to 750 per month. Most of the people learn Garba for one to two months before Navratri.