What is Dasara?

Dasara — Dussehra in most of India — runs ten days in the month of Ashvayuja, landing in September or October, and in Telugu households it is a goddess festival first and a Ramayana festival second. The nine nights of Navaratri that build toward it are organized around Durga appearing in a different form each day, with a different colored saree to match; in Telangana and coastal Andhra that overlaps with Bathukamma, where women stack seasonal flowers into conical towers and float them on water. Many homes set up a Bommala Koluvu, a stepped display of dolls arranged into scenes across an odd number of tiers — gods at the top, then saints, then a village, then ordinary people at the bottom. Women and girls visit each other's koluvu, receive tamboolam at the door, and silently grade the arrangement.

The tenth day, Vijayadashami, is the auspicious one: the day to begin things. New businesses open, children are given their first letters in Aksharabhyasam, instruments and tools get taken up again. In the evening comes Jammi worship, tied to the Pandavas recovering their hidden weapons from a shami tree at the end of their exile. People pluck jammi leaves, exchange them with elders and neighbors, and say 'Bangaram' — gold — because for that evening the leaves stand in for it. Some towns close with a Ravana effigy burning, though in most Telugu neighborhoods the goddess side of the festival comfortably outweighs the Rama side.