Changing festival profiles- The Deepavali

Diwali is an eternal festival-there is no denying that. But there has certainly been a sea of change in the manner how it is celebrated over the decades. Here is a peek into that:

Grandmother's ; the 1940s and 1950s-Large household celebration:

  The Amaldar’s household is a beehive of activity even a month before Deepavali. Home cleansing is a noisy, dusty affair; punctuated with generous bouts of singing, joking and laughter. The tailor is expected any moment. He was here four weeks back with a small book and a measuring tape and had diligently noted the specifications and measurements of the dozen odd dresses he was expected to make for the children of the house. Today he would deliver the finished products that were sure to evince squeals of delight and tinges of envy!

  The kitchen is in a programmed mode on its own. Preparations for Kajjyaya (a delicious sweet made of jaggery and pounded rice) are underway. It requires that the rice be soaked, dried and pounded to ensure a soft consistency for the sweet.

  Uncle ‘Mari’ is expected to come home any day from the city, lugging along the contingency of cracker packets. On his arrival, the crackers are examined and discussed with great interest and anticipation and put away carefully. They are not placed in direct contact with the cold floor for fear that they might catch a cold and hence perform below par! Every afternoon they are lovingly laid out in the sun to catch the warmth, remain crisp, and not disappoint with a pusssss when lighted!

Celebrations of Deepavali begin a day before Naraka Chathurdasi. We call it ‘Bhogi Habba.’ On this day, we offer prayers to Water. The bathroom is cleaned and decorated with Rangoli. The hande (huge brass vessel used to heat water for bathing) is filled with water, decorated with flowers, vermillion and rangoli. Pooja is offered in the evening. The culinary delights would have already begun, heralding three days of fun and frolic.

     Another feature of Deepavali is the ritual of bathing. The whole house is awake and about in the wee hours on Narakachathurdasi, everyone vying to be the first to take the wonderful ‘oil-bath’ well before sunrise. Then follow the burst of first crackers to coincide with first rays of the sun. Crackers are burst in the evening too. Doing it in large groups made it seem an unending, joyous affair.  

     The newly wed sister would be home with her handsome husband who has also come with loads of gifts to his in-laws and wife’s siblings. Pampering him and getting to know him better is another competitively done activity.

    On Balipadyami my granny would make figurines of Balindra and Vamana with clay and worship it in the courtyard of the house. Every threshold of the house was adorned on either side by a small nugget of cow-dung topped with few blades of grass. Bursting crackers continued on this day as well. Being the large household that it was, there never would be a dearth of people cheering, watching or vying to burst crackers. 

     Ten days after Balipadyami is the Tulasi Habba or Uthwana Dwadhasi. Some of the crackers are retained for this day when the Tulasi plant (Basil) is worshipped. A twig from the gooseberry tree is placed by the side of the tulasi plant.  An arathi (lighted lamp offering) is made of seven gooseberries and the women of the neighbourhood are invited for the arathi. Arriving in swishing, shining silk saris, they sit before the Vrindavan, sing songs and go home after the arathi, presented with a leaf-cup (donne) full of fresh kosambari (salad made from soaked moong dal.)

     For the rest of the month, at the fall of dusk, earthenware lamps are placed at the sides of the main threshold and before the vrindavan everyday. It is the Karthika Deepa.

Mother's; 1980s-Individual houses in Locality celebrations:

     Mother was fairly good at making dresses-but the choice in her repertoire was limited. It was either a long skirt with bodice and a back-buttoned blouse or a short skirt with a bodice and a back-buttoned blouse. She couldn’t make frocks, pants or shirts. Three weeks before the festival, she shopped for the materials buying colours of her choice and budget, and got down to work at the sewing machine. Trying and retrying the dresses-in-making on us, she would finally finish off alterations, buttons and buttonholes two days before the festival. That left her with a day to prepare obattu (sweet pancake). She would often complain that she could never make kajjyayas as soft as her mother did! 

     We had no hande at home and so Bhogi habba meant filling the boiler instead with water and offering pooja! There was similarly no ritual of feeding and lighting the firewood late the previous night to keep water ready for a bath. A flick of switch at four in the morning would suffice! 

     For us, the enthusiasm for the early morning ritual bath on Narakachathurdasi was sustained only because we were averse to hearing the sound of the first crackers from any other home in our locality! The competition had another face to it too. We would prevent anyone from sweeping the roads in front of our houses so that by the end of festivities, we could judge who burst most crackers by stock taking the amount of rubble before houses!

     The graduation from roll caps and guns to chinakuruli pataki (small green chilli sized crackers) to aane pataki (slightly larger and louder, post-office red ones) and lakshmi pataki (had a photo of goddess Lakshmi on it) and finally to the green coloured atom bomb happened in a span of few hours, bravado being spurred on by friends and taunting elders!

     I always remember celebrating our Deepavalis on Narakachathurdasi and Balipadyami. The Lakshmi Pooja that falls on the new-moon day between the two festivals is not a big celebration for us, unlike for the North-Indians. Even schools remained open on this day, thus seriously breaking into days of revelry. Mom never missed out on preparing payasa, ambode, kosambari and vanghibath or chitranna on these days taking care not to repeat a single menu on either day.

  She preferred lighting the diyas in the traditional earthenware lamps to lighting candles. When we reluctantly called it a day by the end of Balipadyami, the festival mood had not yet worn off.

     We were allowed to wear our new dresses to school the next day and it was an extended celebration of the festival, wearing off gradually rather that abruptly.

My family, 21st Century-Urban, nuclear family celebrations:

  Shopping for clothes is just days before the festival when I can steal two evening hours off from my busy schedule. It is a hurried affair, shopping beginning and ending at a one-stop shop, as I would rather pay slightly more for my children’s clothes here than take a whole afternoon or day off to drive to a distant shopping arcade.

  I am already inundated with boxes of sweets from patients, friends and medical representatives and we decide we don’t need to prepare anymore at home except for payasam. My husband is calorie conscious, children are not too particular about any sweet and anyway, I can’t make traditional sweets as well as mom or granny did!

  Bhogi habba is now reduced to praying in the pooja room only, before a mug filled with water! The geyser in the bathroom is too high to even be adorned with flowers or kumkum. I have managed to adorn the pooja room and the front of the courtyard with my favourite rangolis in Deepavali themes the day before.

  I didn’t want my children to miss the excitement of waking up early and bursting that first cracker. I had plans of an enticing offer of a Sunday outing in the mall if they agreed to get up early and burst crackers!

  “But mom, we have decided to celebrate this Diwali without crackers!” my son had drawled when I had coaxed them out to buy crackers

  ‘What? Diwali without crackers?” I could never understand this fourteen year old. Were they serious or camouflaging the laziness to burst crackers?

  “Yeah! Noise pollution, you know. Our club in school has pledge to make this a noise-less Diwali.”

  “But-well, OK. We could play with sparklers, colour matches, snakes…Rockets? Soundless rockets, perhaps?” I was desperate not to let go of the child in me.

  “Mom, don’t you know that it is polluting the environment with the lots of carbon-di-oxide?” My eight-year-old daughter chips in.

  ‘Then what do you celebrate Deepavali with?”

  “Why, the spirit of the festival, of course! We can adorn the outside of the house with lamps…candles actually, if Dad insists that the oil will spill over and stain the compound wall. Can’t you see? It is the spirit that matters! The schools are closed, shops offer heavy discounts and freebies for consumer products, and people are wearing new clothes and exchanging gifts! Mom, Diwali can be everywhere, even without crackers!”He sermones.

  “Guess so!” I sighed. It was time to grow up, time to stop buying and bursting crackers, enjoying myself on the pretext of my children! The house was watching Deepavali celebrations across the country on TV as I quietly escaped to the virtual world- to blog fantastic memories of bygone Deepavalis!