Rewind & Replay: The Changing Face of Diwali!
愉快的燈節. That's Happy Diwali in Chinese, friends. The lights are Chinese, the Lakshmi and Ganesh idols too. Stotras in Chinese must be next.
Diwali is now a retail season. Digital sales, corporate hampers, home renovations, festive finance schemes. Outrageous designer gifts, including home spa coupons where professionals clean your house.
The Diwali I remember had none of this. It began weeks early, with the great Diwali ka safai. Ma would announce it and my sister and I would do it grudgingly: doors, windows, every shelf. Nobody was excused. Gifts were dry fruits, homemade sweets, a useful thing for the house. Nobody gave a gadget or a gift card.
A day before the festival, my sister and I washed the earthen lamps and soaked them in water. Then came oil, a wick, the sondhi khushboo of wet clay, rangoli, flowers, laughter.
The air smelled of besan roasting, cardamom and pure ghee. Grandmothers, mothers and neighbours sat in large circles and made tins of chakli, mathri, laddoo and chivda that lasted weeks. Nobody counted calories. We ate. I ate so much mithai that I fell sick every single year. New clothes were bought only at festival time, in the latest fashion. They were precious. There was no online shopping to flatten the wait, and the anticipation was half the pleasure.Crackers were planned, because money was limited. My sister wanted anars, pretty chakris, phool jhadis. I wanted bombs. And snake tablets: icky, horrible, a black worm of ash growing out of nothing. I loved them. Perhaps that was the first sign of a sense of humour that has since hardened into a rather dark one.
We sun-dried the crackers on old newspapers and rationed them carefully. Then the real contest, with the neighbours' children. Whose crackers were better. That was the competition, and nothing mattered more.
Now it is fusion mithai, chocolate mousse in kulhars, and an aesthetic built for Instagram."Diwali Dasra, hath Pai Pasra" my Nani said. Relax, enjoy, indulge.We once made the festival with our hands. Now we buy it.
Note:(pics from internet for illustration only)
- Dr.Gayatri Mohapatra
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