Diwali Days

Reprinted with permission of The Tablet.

When winter begins in India, the dawn becomes lightly touched with frost, the trees straighten up and a soft new light appears. The summer's harrowing heat and its thundering monsoon give way to Kartik, the golden season of October and November. It is a season of silky sunlight and blossoming trees, when the subcontinent bursts into flaming flower and the gods prepare the earth so they may descend to it in relative comfort. When the chrysanthemums erupt, it is the time of festival.

Diwali is the festival of light. Celebrated at the end of the dark fortnight of the Amavasya or the waning moon, it is usually held at the end of October or beginning of November. Diwali comes from the Sanskrit deepavali, meaning "row of lamps"; it is a time of remembrance, feasts, fireworks, forgiveness and a renewal of life. Life takes on a delicious newness; as the sun turns honey-gold, there is the shivering anticipation on the edges of every starlit evening of winter waiting to return.

Clay lamps are lined up along verandahs, on windowsills, along driveways, in gardens and courtyards. On the terraces, lamps and candles are placed as far back from the ledge as possible so they do not die from the breeze and plunge the house into inauspicious darkness. The prayer room is swept and swabbed until it gleams defiantly in the face of every disapproving mother-in-law. New clothes, dried fruit and nuts, boxes of pistachios, cashews and raisins are wrapped for relatives and friends. Plates of sweets are kept ready for guests, among them laddoo (balls of chickpea flour), payesh (thickened milk sweetened with jaggery sugar and rice), barfi (thickened, boiled-down milk) and jalebis (twirls of fried sugar).

At night the electric lights are switched off. Small quiet flames gleam under giant trees. Along wayside shrines, candles flicker amid bunches of marigolds. People bring offerings of flowers, rice grains and candles, and leave them on bridges, by the sides of lakes and in front of their homes. While people sleep, Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, and Ganesh, god of well-being, might emerge from the candle-lit darkness.

My earliest memories of Diwali are of my mother creating rangolis - geometric and floral patterns made from coloured rice flour - at the entrance to the house. My job was to paint two little squiggles on either side of the stairs which led to the upper floor of our house. The squiggles were meant to be the little feet of Lakshmi, who trips into homes at night during Diwali to survey family fortunes and decide whether they need a boost. The little squiggles had to be painted all along the stairs and up into the prayer room in case the goddess lost her way.

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