08/09/2026
Every year around Gauri, these flowers appear.
But have you ever wondered why?
Women carrying them home.
The same flowers adorning Gauri’s pandal.
It made me wonder about the quiet relationship between Gauri festival traditions, monsoon flowers and the forests around us.
These native flowers bloom with the rains, at just this time of year. Perhaps that is why they became part of the celebration because they were here, growing around us.
Once, traditional festival flowers were often gathered from gardens, fields and the open spaces around us.
You went looking for them.
You noticed what was flowering.
You learnt the seasons.
The magic wasn’t just in the flowers.
It was in going out to find them.
That simple act connected us to native plants, local seasons and the land and perhaps made us care for it in ways we didn’t even realise.
Today, so much can simply be bought. And somewhere along the way, we can lose the connection behind the ritual.
Perhaps our Maharashtra traditions can continue to remind us of that connection to the forests, the seasons, the flowers and the places we call home.
Because when a celebration comes from the land around us, it feels like more than a festival.
It feels like belonging.
