Today( 2nd April) I have decided to fast for first time in life and the plan is to continue fasting for next nine days. I believe this is going to be really tough for me since I have eating disorder and believes food is the only thing that makes me happy. 

I enjoy eating so much yet decided to experiment with fasting because of its scientific benefits which i want to reap or atleast start reaping:

I have like these huge expectations from 9 days of my life.I might not be able to achieve all of them or even complete these nine day of fasting still I have decided to give 100 percent efforts this time. Since the expectations are huge, the timing should also be perfect so I have decided to do this experiment in Navratri,a Hindu festival which is celebrated in the same way: fasting and worshipping goddess for nine days. 

I celebrate my birthday according to Hindu/lunar schedule so my birthday falls on tenth day of Chaitra Navratri which implies I get to celebrate my birthday on various days (according to the advanced schedule) every year. This time around its on eleventh April. I will celebrate my birthday after completing this challenge.

So this is my 9 days spritual journey to reap scientific benefits from a long going indian tradition.

Since this is a spritual journey as well so to respect that I decided to learn more about Navratri by reading about it on Wikipedia. My family has been celebrating it for a very long time now still I need to refresh my basic knowledge so below is a little information I gathered from internet about Navratri

Navaratri[a] is a Hindu celebration that ranges more than nine evenings (and ten days) and is commended consistently in the harvest time season. It is noticed for various reasons and celebrated contrastingly in different regions of India and Asia.

The celebration is related to the conspicuous fight that occurred among Durga and the devil Mahishasura to praise the triumph of good over evil. These nine days are exclusively committed to Durga and her nine symbols - the Navadurga. Each day is related to a manifestation of the goddess.

As indicated by a few Hindu texts, for example, the Shakta and Vaishnava Puranas, Navaratri hypothetically falls four times in a year. Of these, the Sharada Navaratri close to pre-winter equinox (September-October) is the most celebrated and the Vasanta Navaratri close to spring equinox (March-April) is the second most celebrated. In all cases, Navaratri falls in the brilliant portion of the Hindu lunisolar months. The festivals differ by locale, passing on a lot to the innovativeness and inclinations of the Hindu.

Navaratri is praised in various ways all through India. Certain individuals worship by fasting while others feast. The Chaitra Navaratri finishes in Ram Navami and the Sharada Navaratri comes full circle in Durga Puja and Vijayadashami.

Before, Hindus used to present Durga's legends during the Chaitra Navaratri, yet this training around the spring equinox has been declining. For most contemporary Hindus, the Navaratri around the March-april equinox is the significant celebration of life that one notices whereas Navratri around September is celebration of good winning over devil. 

I have chosen to do fasting in Chaitra navratri and to record my experience of it. It can also be called a nine day fasting challenge 

First day of Chaitra Navratri is new year as per Hindu calendar so I am starting this journey on a new year.

So Let's start.......

Yes,i completed the first day fast and I feel a sense of achievement ,maybe because whenever I have tried to fast for a day in the past I have failed miserably.  Infact on the days that I tried to fast previously,I used to end up eating more than usual because the thought of staying hungry makes me more hungry.😅

I started my day with by writing the above blog and then taking a shower to sit in aarti. In my house,we do all the vidhi's of Navratri and i have grown up seeing my family members do that although with time the scale of vidhi's that we perform is seeing a downward trend. We do a small havan on all 9 days,followed by aarti and then giving water to sun(from this year we have started giving water to shiv ling we have installed outside our house). 

It's been few years that i sat for whole vidhi so it felt good overall and while doing havan i realised how our tradition says alot about life. Havan symbolise that each and every object of the world including human life has to end up into ashes.I felt good taking part in it and infact i was the one who gave water this time to shiv ling. 

In the afternoon I had some banana with milk(without sugar) followed up by kuttu ki puri with tea(without sugar). I am someone who always had criticism about how people have changed the rules of Navratri fasting for their own convenience but now I have started realising why they did so,it's damn hard. I had a discussion with my mother who is constantly insisting me to eat different things that she can make for vrat for which i have a counter that eating too much of vrat food actually is a disrespect to Navratri Vidhi/rules however by late night i started feeling too hungry and to the extent that i started surfing online what all can we eat in Navratri vrat. I was shocked how people have made soo much of food for navratri but then after eating the kuttu ke aate ki puri ,i know it's tasteless and afterall their is no grain or vegetable that we can consume so now I am slightly okay with the fact that people have made it little easy for themselves atleast so more people can take on this tradition in future generations without dieing of starvation.

Having said all that i still feel, you shouldn't eat too much of vrat food as that kills the whole purpose whether that be spiritual one or that of detoxing your body. 

Here is a list of few rules of Navratri Vrat i came across: 

I am very hungry still I strongly feel we should be honest with whatever we do so  keep a strict fast. At the end the only rule of vrat is to not eat grain and vegetables so yeah,everyone can use rules as per their convenience and honesty.

Hopefully I can continue on day 2 🤞

It's midday and i feel i will be able to pull through this,it's not like i don't feel hungry now,it's just that the excitement has come down a bit which also brought the craving for my regular spicy food down.

My cousin playfully offered me pizza,my friends asked me to join them for gol gappe and my bhabhi offered me to eat aloo chawal but i denied them so yes,if i can say no to these offers  i know i will be able to continue this for some more time. 

Okay, here's a learning point for me : I have always been a person in my life who don't hesitate to say "No" and that has helped me a lot in my life. I have bluntly said no to cigarette offers in school, alcohol offers in college,no to toxic friends,no to favours, no to family on various occasions so i know myself,my decisions are my own and i am not an easy guy to influence and atlast if I say no,i stand with it. It's a long challenge and since i have already said no to food,i am not going to give up any time soon.

By the way,the aloo chawal was the toughest offer of them all,it's a routine food for me but it's also my favourite.I always end up overeating it almost on daily basis so that extra plate of aloo chawal has compounded over the years and contributed to extra kilos i have now along with lot of laziness that i get on daily basis in afternoons. I hope i can say no to that extra plate after these nine days as well.

Also,my close friend suggested me to do some light body exercise which will help me more in achieving those goals at the end of these nine days and so i have decided to do that in the evening. 

Hopefully I can continue this on day three as well 🤞. 

By the way I was surprised to see the 100s of options available on @zomato for navratra food which ranges from big thalli to saboot dana biryani (non veg people can't still make peace with veg biryani here we have saboot Dana,lol) . People who don't have time to make food for themselves can always take advantage of these sites and complete their vrat.I searched these when I was feeling too hungry although i knew,i won't order it but seeing the photo helps whether that be of food or your loved ones.

I exactly feel like the picture above in middle of the day. With couple of days gone,the craving for food has diminished and I no longer feels hungry at any point of day however I woke up with high fever and cold. I guess everyone who keeps these fast/vrat have to go through this for couple of days,I have seen my mother getting fever while keeping these vrats too.To add on, the little exercise I did added to the pain and I just felt like quitting at that moment but the sole fact that I have completed two days and this is my best chance to keep all nine stopped me. 

I was feeling that weakness throughout the day however that didn't affect the daily chorus as I have taken a week off for studies so the weakness will not affect studies at all, I am pretty sure about it but decided to avoid any physical activity in coming days.

Observation for the day: One thing I noticed today is that eating takes a lot of time of your day. Obviously it is not recommended and this is not the way to get extra hours but for someone like me who takes an hour each for 2 main meals of day and half an hour for 2-3 meals in between meals in a day that compounds to lot of time.(3.5hr*7days= 21.35hrs a week) that's almost a full day that I spend eating so someone like me certainly need to reduce the time,which is any way recommended. 

Because of all this calculation and processing certain happening in my life the time was a slow moving camel for me today. I studied as much I could and later end up just staring at watch for a while.I know this is just one of the day and tomorrow will be better. 

I woke up earlier than usual today and gave some time to affirm gratefulness to people around me and the things I have with me at the moment.I also promised myself to be honest with people and efforts. 

I am feeling better today and to some extent that is a result of little spiritual vibes that are around me at the moment and the morning prayers. I have decided to increase the time I have planned to give to studies and also to take a walk in the evening.There is no sense of quitting today and neither I crave for food, I am happy with my banana's 😅. Hopefully I am continuing this for longer now. 

Quick tips: Tea helps when you get headache during fasting and banana along with raw paneer is a good source of energy to avoid any weakness.

Realisation: I am someone who have full faith in universe power and with time I decided to accept God as a reference for Universe. I believe that we are child of universe and can demand from the universe what we want and the universe do give us that,we also call it law of attraction,universal power,power of thought etc. 

For me atleast,the universe has been giving everything that I needed (not what I wanted) thus whenever I pray I usually request God for certain thing for me and people around me.This process takes a little more time  when I pray whenever I am in temple, Gurudwara or any other spiritual place and often been noticed by people around (the extra minutes I take) but I haven't asked for anything this time and decided not to . Maybe at this point,I believe the universe knows better about what I need than myself so i have left it all for them. I have faith in Universe and it will lead me to correct path like it always had.

I feel weak on day five but here I am ,in an adventure park,this was certainly not something I planned. I went to government office for some documents verification but the process couldn't be completed due to some reasons. I was feeling weak and needed a breather so decided to enter the adventure park in front of that government office. 

I have a quite a history with this park, since the time the park has been opened for visitors i have been here at different phases of life , moreover in phases and this is one place i have fallen in love with. The whole area was not really good and opening an adventure park with big lake and all the activities was surely a bad idea. In the initial years whenever I have been here,it was always empty and maybe that was the reason I was in love with this lake,i had a full lake to myself but now when i am back here years later things have changed now, i see a good amount of crowd here and a decent one too. The standard of activities like bowling,rain dance ,roof climbing,tree passing have really increased but i was never here for this,i was here for my lake of peace which is no more the same.

I form a connection with places and often revisit them just to check in them as if they are human do i checked on of my loved places and it's no more the same. The place has much more energy, the place is full of teens enjoying their best days of life,the place is full of romantic couples doing rain dance but the place is not same as the one loved by me.

I spent some time by lake side writing this and reading my book and then watched these new kids about to enter the maturity age,they are carefree at the moment,i wish they stay the same in future.. 

I was asked to add in some activity in my ticket to enter the park,to which i denied doing any activity but since that was a rule to buy something of atleast 200, I took the bowling and three water bottles (  use of food voucher 😂). Hopefully i will use these bowling tickets as well before I leave. 

As days are passing by the i am able to adapt to it and there is not much of weakness or food hunger,if i continue this way . I hope i can complete the first discipline challenge ..  

After writing this blog on day 5,i actually spent my evening in EOD and it was a mesmerizing experience. I am sure to write a separate blog about the place. Till then here is a small video of that evening of me enjoying tea alone sitting on Lake site.

It's already evening and there is nothing much which i feel important enough to be documented except my conversation within family where my cousin had an opinion that after 2-3 days of vrat we tend to build a habit of not eating so we don't feel hungry, i didn't had the energy to discuss further on this and also i needed my study time so at that moment I agreed with her. 

But now in the evening when I actually gave it a thought,I have a mix feeling towards this general prespection about consecutive days fasting,one is that definitely first few days(1st-3rd) are toughest since this when your body stops receiving food all of sudden and your tongue stops receiving different flavours it crave's for in a usual day but the actual tough days are the 4th to 7th day of vrat because in first three days,the challenges are bigger but your motivation is high and your body isn't that weak whereas from 8th day you have the excitement of achieving the goal but in between these are 4th-7th day,where the motivation is kind of dieing a slow death,the body is getting weaker and atlast the goal is not yet visible (still not sure if you will be able to achieve it).

I did put in my point forward and my cousin atlast agreed that the middle days are the toughest one and the only way to win over them is by focusing on the process without thinking much about goal,Just sail through these days while maintaining the discipline and the 8th day you will be excited and 9th day you will achieve your goals.(i tried using metaphor in days,hope i was successful;still new to blogging).

It was only while typing the above paragraph that I realised something important in my life I am currently pursuing also has 9 stages. 

This discussion also made me realise that I am also somewhat is middle days of my goal so all I need to do is have faith in the process and keep working towards it,the 8th and 9th day of life will come (i used metaphor again,this time in a better way).

Hope I am able to complete this day as well.