Actress Neha Dhupia at a city dandiya

A sprawling wooden dance floor, a DJ churning out remixes of Beedi, girls doing a Bips belly dance, boys doing a shirtless Sourav (on the Lord’s balcony). Add to this a screen hot bod egging them on. Welcome to Dandiya 2006.

Dandiya, what dandiya? Navratri now is just another time to disco. The graceful folk dance of Gujarat has given way to Bollywood pelvic thrusts, traditional tunes have been drowned by the console call, the lehenga-choli has been replaced by tank-tops and three-quarters, a family night-out has been outstripped by the urge to ogle Rakhi Sawant or Neha Dhupia.

“The traditional touch in the dandiyas is completely lost. There is high-decibel music and people sans festive finery dancing without dandiya sticks! It is nothing but a giant-sized discotheque,” says MP Md Salim, one of the judges who went from one venue to another in vain to find a proper dandiya in town on Puja nights.

The organisers are quick to blame it on modern times and market forces. Some point to the festival’s growing pan-Indian popularity, while others cite business basics. “The bottomline is to attract crowds. If item girls draw more than 5,000 people every night, we can plan a bigger event next year,” says an event manager, who flew down a few Bolly babes.

To some, commercialisation is acceptable but the dilution is not. “Earlier, people would struggle to lay their hands on dandiya sticks, but this time there were no takers,” rues Sundeep Bhutoria, who has steered many a dandiya event before.

Mayor-in-council Faiyaz Ahmed Khan, who also did the rounds of dandiya venues, observed how “the traditional bands had stopped playing as everybody was dancing to the sound of the DJ”.

And there was no let-up at the popular discs either, as the Puja nights registered “record footfall”.