Diwali

Every year my family has a Diwali party at our house. Past parties have included as many as sixty of our closest family friends. Everyone in the family has a role. My mom cooks a feast that includes at a minimum kadu (spiced pumpkin), poori aalu (fried bread and potatoes), dahi vada (lentil donuts in yogurt), and a variety of desserts: cham-chams, rasgullas, badam burfi. My dad is in charge of vacuuming and cleaning the house, my brother puts up the "Christmas" lights inside and outside the house, and I am in charge of decorations including candle and flower arrangements.

Since college, this ritual has become evermore important to me. Part of our Diwali tradition growing up including my mom telling us the story of Diwali and doing puja by our fireplace. Because our party is not always the same weekend as actual Diwali, it is sometimes a challenge to convince my family not to forego this part of the tradition –I am only in town for a couple of days and getting ready for the party takes precedence over the religious part of the holiday.

Whether or not we do the puja before the party, I love the feeling of our house prior to the party. It feels clean, fresh, and warm. We all are filled with the anticipation of guests arriving, the women decked out in their finest saris or salwar kameezes or lehengas. We turn on lights throughout the house and light candles, not only to welcome our guests, but Goddess Laxmi as well. Elements of the party include feasting, mingling, lighting sparklers and fireworks in the backyard, gambling with pennies as poker chips, and lots of laughing.

Growing up, I used to think of Diwali as Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one, since there would be decorating the house, new clothes, a feast, and fireworks just for that holiday. What makes it even better is that my holiday season starts as much as a month before Thanksgiving and continues through New Year’s. This is also a challenge, though, because I always want to take time off for Diwali to be with my family. Perhaps if Diwali were at the same time as Christmas and Hanukkah, I wouldn’t have grown up celebrating Christmas as well as Diwali – but lucky for me I get presents on both :-).

I have gone to great lengths to savor my mom’s Diwali feast. One year I traveled home with a cooler to bring food back with me, and got stopped at airport security because they objected to me taking a cooler and I didn’t have enough time to argue. I called my brother to take it back home with him and my mom actually Fed-Exed food to me a couple days later.

Diwali is a week and a half away. This year we are not having a huge party, just a low-key one with the two families we’re closest to. My mom’s father passed away in late July and she doesn’t feel it would be appropriate to have a large party, nor is she up for it. Nevertheless, I think all the essential elements of going home for Diwali are there (family, friends, food, fun) and I’m really looking forward to it.