Global Insomnia, Glitter, and Gluten-Free Fasting: How Navratri Took Over the World in Nine Nights

The planet is currently 8.3 billion souls deep and still counting, yet for nine consecutive nights every autumn roughly a fifth of them voluntarily surrender sleep, carbohydrates, and any remaining sense of irony. Welcome to Navratri— the festival that proves humanity can synchronize global insomnia without a single push-notification from Meta.

Picture it: from the neon-blasted garba grounds of Gandhinagar to car-park pop-ups in New Jersey, the same circular choreography is traced by people who otherwise cannot agree on tax policy, cricket rankings, or whether pineapple belongs on pizza. The dance is simple enough—clockwise, then counter-clockwise, repeat until shin splints or enlightenment, whichever arrives first—yet its planetary echo is oddly comforting in an era when most synchronized movements involve central banks hiking interest rates in unison.

International airlines quietly adore Navratri. Every October they add extra belly-hold capacity for 14-hour nonstop flights stuffed with lehenga skirts so voluminous they could double as parachutes. Heathrow’s lost-and-found reports a 400 % spike in abandoned bangles, a statistic some Brexit analysts have tried (and failed) to weaponize. Meanwhile, over in Silicon Valley, tech bros who spent the year monetizing mindfulness suddenly discover that actual devotion cannot be placed on a cap table—although that hasn’t stopped three start-ups from pitching “DandRaaS: Devotion-as-a-Service” to a16z.

Across the Global South, the economics get deliciously warped. In Surat, the world’s synthetic-fiber capital, factories pivot from fast-fashion knockoffs to 24-hour production of mirror-work chaniya cholis for export. Bangladeshi garment workers—who normally stitch logos on hoodies for European teenagers—now sew tiny bells that will jingle in Texas suburbia. A single spinning ornament travels farther than most humans ever will, racking up more air miles than the average COP delegate and still emitting less hot air.

The festival’s dietary subplot is where modern absurdity peaks. Observe the Gujarati diaspora in Johannesburg attempting gluten-free, keto-friendly fasting menus: sabudana pearls repurposed as pseudo-grain, almond-milk shrikhand that tastes like regret. In London’s Wembley arena, food trucks hawk “Vegan Rajashtani Thali” to bankers who wouldn’t know a millet roti if it short-sold their portfolio. Somewhere in the cosmic ledger, an ancestral goddess updates her spreadsheet: “Humanity Level: Still ridiculous, but trying.”

Of course, no global ritual escapes the attention of geopolitics. Last year, Canadian politicians—fresh from denouncing foreign electoral interference—turned up to garba nights in identical kurtas, proving that cultural appropriation is perfectly acceptable when the vote bank is sizable enough. Meanwhile, the Indian consulate in Dubai issued a circular reminding expatriates that dandiya sticks are “cultural artifacts,” not potential weapons in the next intra-gulf squabble. The memo arrived laminated, presumably to survive spilled thandai.

Then there is the digital dimension. TikTok dances may be banned in several countries, but Instagram Reels have stepped in, offering algorithmically blessed 15-second bursts of synchronized twirls that earn creators more in ad revenue than the average farmer makes in a quarter. The irony is exquisite: an agrarian harvest festival monetized by teenagers in ring lights, while actual harvests fail under increasingly erratic monsoons. Somewhere, a climate scientist updates her doom-scroll with extra doom.

Yet for all the commercialization, something stubbornly human survives. At 3 a.m. in a repurposed New Jersey warehouse, an Uber driver from Lagos sings a Durga mantra alongside a Syrian refugee who learned the phonetics phonetically. Neither speaks the other’s language, but the rhythm is bilingual. For those 180 heartbeats per minute, the planet’s usual fault lines—passport, profit, prejudice—momentarily dissolve in collective sweat. The cynic in me notes this is cheaper than therapy and far less regulated; the romantic in me files it under “evidence against total despair.”

So here we are: a species capable of coordinating nine nights of synchronized devotion across continents, even as we fail to coordinate on carbon emissions or vaccine equity. Navratri, then, is less about gods and more about humans proving we can still circle the wagons—literally—before circling back to doomscroll. The music stops at dawn, the drones land, the bangles are swept up, and the planet resumes its regularly scheduled catastrophe. But the footprints remain, spirals pressed into dust from Nairobi to New Jersey, a temporary truce choreographed in mirror-work and minor chords. If that isn’t a miracle, it’ll do until one arrives—probably right on schedule next October.