Free mehndi, kajri and a floor full of dancing: Ramapura's Sawan Hariyali Mahotsav puts the ward's women centre stage

Ramapura ward spent its Sawan evening doing something Banaras has always done well — handing the stage to its own women and letting the season's folk songs take over the rest. The Sawan Hariyali Mahotsav, organised by ward councillor Ram Gopal Verma, was built around a mehndi competition in which application was free for everyone who turned up, with prizes for the best hands at the end. Around that ran the rest of the evening: kajri and other Sawan folk songs, a felicitation for the singer Kanchan Singh, and a long stretch in which the audience simply got up and danced. MLA Saurabh Srivastav inaugurated the festival and honoured the performers. Councillors Vijay Dwivedi, Chandra Nath Mukherjee and Tanna Sahni were among those present, along with a large gathering of women from the ward. The organisers framed the programme around women's empowerment, and the shape of the evening made that point better than any speech could — a neighbourhood event where the participants, the performers and most of the audience were women from the same few lanes. Hariyali gatherings like this one fill Varanasi's mohallas every Sawan, and they are usually the most enjoyable version of the season: no ticket, no queue, no stage barrier, and a repertoire of songs that most of the people singing along first learned at home.

Compiled by HelloBanaras from public sources: KTV News Varanasi