Pratik Gandhi is a diehard garba enthusiast and loves to soak in the Navratri fervour. Even though Pratik is currently shooting for his next project in Mumbai, he says he will visit a garba venue during the last two days of Navratri and dance his heart out. Talking to us in between shots, Pratik speaks about his favourite Navratri moments, how he misses his friends and “gang members” from Surat during Navratri and how he is unable to enjoy the festival to the hilt now as he has been keeping extremely busy. Excerpts from a chat:

Navratri is one festival that I wait for every year and since there were very muted celebrations in the last two years, I was really looking forward to playing garba this year. But my shooting schedule coincided with Navratri and all my plans went for a toss. But the moment I realised that this was going to happen, I started sending hints to the director that I needed a couple of days off for Navratri. Even though I have a jam-packed schedule right now, I will ensure that I go and play garba for the last two days. Navratri is happening after two years, and I had to play garba this year.

I have been lucky to be part of some of the most popular garba songs in the recent past. I hear those songs being played at several venues and feel completely distraught that I am unable to go and enjoy them myself. Such is life, but it also feels great that so many people groove to garba songs from my movies. While growing up, I never imagined that I would reach this far in the entertainment industry.

When I was in school in Surat, we had a huge gang and all of us used to play garba for the entire night. It was so much fun. It was around that time when the organisers introduced the concept of passes. So, we would go scrounging for passes and since our group was big, we had to do a lot of jugaad to get passes. It used to be a lot of fun. I miss those days.