Diwali and Annakut Festivities!

First things first - new pictures are up.

This past Saturday, India celebrated the end of the year with Diwali (or Deepavali, depending on your choice of spelling), the festival of light. Because the auspicious Hindu days follow the lunar calendar, the exact Gregorian Date changes every year; this year Diwali was celebrated on October 21st - the end of the lunar month of Ashwin. One would think that on such an auspicious holiday, people would go to the temple, but such is not the case. Diwali is a time for prayer and reflection with the family, and so most families celebrate Diwali at home. Attendance at Akshardham was poor that day - maybe 2,500 people at the most. The day got significantly more interesting after I left at about 6:30.

Cousin Akshar and Jayu mama picked up me from Akshardham and we headed to Bengali Market to buy some firecrackers. My grandfather had said "no firecrackers this year" but Akshar kept nagging his dad until Jayu mama relented. Of course, when we got to the market, he only wanted the most expensive fireworks (though in dollar terms they're really not that expensive!) but thankfully his dad put him in place. Every few seconds though, in the middle of the roundabout in the center of Bengali Market, someone would explode a hydrobomb firecracker. They don't do anything pretty or fun. They just explode. With an enormous bang. The ones going off about 50' away in the roundabout created shockwaves powerful enough to knock over empty cups and make your hair fly around. That's not to mention render you temporarily deaf, only to regain your hearing in time for the next bomb to go off. Anyway, I digress. Akshar settled on a string of 500 blackcats, a few chakras (the ones that spin and spray sparks), and some fountains. A bit of bargaining brought the price down by 50% (gotta love India) and a quick "Namaste, and Happy Diwali" to the store manager (a friend) brought the price down another Rs. 15/-.

We got back home soon thereafter, and I met Nirja mami's parents for the first time since my janoi ceremony (the sacred thread ceremony Brahmin kids participate in to symbolize the start of their religious education) back in 1993. They are incredibly progressive parents for their 70-something years of age - they hail from an era of Rajasthan that was largely patriarchal, with males being the primary breadwinners and females being relegated to housewife roles. Yet my mami's mom is a retired secondary school principal, and her father is still a professor (an Ph.D) of classical Sanskrit. No wonder their daughter is so freakin' intelligent...

After a significant amount of clamor that it was getting late, we piled into Jayu mama's tiny Maruti Suzuki and headed off to Nirja mami's sister's (Vasudha and Bhusan Nanavati) house. Of course, that little tiny car seats five at most, and there were 8 of us. So it took Jayu mama two trips to get us there. The Nanavati's house is, for lack of a better word, AMAZING. It's spotless, well-decorated, and very homey. (Why am I not visiting here more often?!) At the doorway, one of their two daughters, Bhavika made a rangoli that was absolutely beautiful outside her front door. I took a picture of it. Then Raghu (the little cousin) came charging up the stairs and couldn't slow down in time to stop himself from running through the rangoli and, because it's made from powder, it scattered and went everywhere. And Bhavika was sad. I explained to her though, that the Rangoli is made of powder only to symbolize the impermanence of the physical world, yet the devotion and patience that it takes to make one are the eternal attributes we must cultivate in our souls.

By the time Jayu mama had arrived with the rest of the family, the entire city was erupting with fireworks. While Diwali refers to the lighting of oil lamps, the industrial revolution and a strong sense of one-up-manship has made even the poorest of the poor spend a few rupees on sparklers at least. We were waiting for them to arrive so that Nirja mami's father could start the puja (worship ceremony). On Diwali, the Goddess Lakshmi is worshipped. She is the goddess of prosperity (the same Lakshmi from the Birla Mandir), and Indians worship her and ask her to come visit their homes. The puja begins with the tying of a nada chhadi, strings, around the wrist as a symbol of participation in the puja and as a simple reminder afterward toa red-dyed bundle of try to remain pure at heart. An invocation and the Shanti Paath verse praying that God grant eternal peace to the one praying, to one's fellow human being, and that eternal peace reign throughout the world are recited to begin the puja. Ganesh is then propitiated, followed by Lakshmi herself. The Diwas themselves represent the light of knowledge, both mundane and spiritual. The diwa symbolically dispels the darkness of ingnorance and evil from our lives, so they are lit and put throughout the house.

The story goes that Lakshmi arrives at the home of the ones doing the puja on the back of an elephant carrying the prosperity for the family for the upcoming year. After Lakshmi is propitiated, firecrackers are burst and devotional songs are sung loudly to scare away Lakshmi's elephant so that she stays and keeps the wealth at the house.

So firecrackers we did. Lots of them. There were fountains, bottle rockets, chakris, sparklers, and the pretty ones that explode high in the air into a ball of colors. And one of the Nanavati family cousins brought TWENTY-FIVE hydrobombs. Yeah, I thought they were loud from 50' away. Ten feet away is a million times worse. And he wouldn't stop blowing them up, just one after another after another after another. He finally quit when the neighbors came out to the windows and started yelling that 10 hydrobombs were enough. Poor Akshar was so excited to light up his 500 blackcats that he didn't shoot off any other ones because he was busy protecting his blackcats so that no one took them by accident. He was furious that almost immediately after setting off his grand finale, someone down the street set off a thousand blackcats. One-upped, he stormed off upstairs blaming his dad for the fact that Diwali was "no fun if you don't spend any money on fireworks."

Raghu, on the other hand, was scared of the sparkler in his hand, but Bhavika's older sister Poorva helped him conquer that fear and by the end of the evening, he was lighting up the big fountains. He showed off his impressive English skills once again by informing me that I had a girlfriend and that she was American and lived in the United States and that George Washington was the first president. Impressive indeed.

Then came dinner. An oh-so-sumptuous dinner. And we ate. A lot. And thinking about it is making me hungry. And it's late. So I'm going to get some dinner.