Dhunuchi naach

A dhunuchi is a wide-mouthed clay censer. It is filled with smouldering coconut husk and dhuno — a resin incense — and it produces a thick, sweet, entirely opaque white smoke. The dance is performed holding one in each hand, and by the confident, a third gripped in the teeth.

The dance is done to the dhak, and the dhaki and the dancer push each other: the drumming accelerates, the dancer matches it, and the whole thing usually ends when one of them gives up. It happens most often at the aarati, on Saptami, Ashtami and Navami evenings.

Stand upwind. The smoke is genuinely thick and if you are asthmatic you will know about it within a minute; the edge of the courtyard is a much better place to watch from than the front.

Give the dancer a wide circle. The censers are full of live embers, the dance is not choreographed, and people do get burnt at the edges of the ring.

In a para puja, if you are invited, take it. Somebody will show you how to hold them — thumb and fingers around the rim, arms out, and never over your own face — and nobody minds a bad dhunuchi naach.

Do not pick one up uninvited, and do not do it in shorts or synthetic clothing. Cotton, sleeves, and hair tied back.

There is no correct form and no judging panel. What people are watching for is nerve and stamina, and the crowd will carry a bad dancer with more enthusiasm than a competent one.

Almost always at the aarati, and almost always in a para puja rather than a headline one. A big-ground puja with a managed queue has nowhere to put a dance and nobody standing still long enough to watch it; a neighbourhood courtyard has both.

Evenings from Saptami onwards are the window, and the later it gets the more likely it is to happen. On Navami night, in a small para, it can go on for an hour.

Some pujas run an open dhunuchi naach competition, usually announced on a board at the entrance. If you see one advertised, come back for it — it is the single most photographable thing in the festival.

Smoke plus low light plus fast movement is a hard combination. Get behind the smoke rather than in front of it so the light rims the dancer, use a shutter fast enough to hold the face and slow enough to let the smoke move, and do not use flash — it lights the smoke and nothing else.

And stay out of the ring. See the photography etiquette guide; this is the moment people forget it.