Festivals of illumination
In 2016, the 2.5 million-strong Indian-american community in the US won a major victory. After campaigning for two decades, which included garnering the support of three Democrat legislators, Carolyn B Maloney, Ami Bera, and Grace Meng, the US Postal Service, which gets around 40,000 requests for issuing stamps to highlight various issues and accepts 25, finally released a special Diwali stamp.
The beauty of the 2016 campaign was that it went beyond being a demand of the Indian-americans. “It is not about the celebration of a religion or a nation. It is about universal values of inclusiveness,” Ranju Batra, chair, Diwali Stamp Project, had told the media back then. Once the sale of the stamp, the first to commemorate Hinduism, was announced, it opened the floodgates of demand. Five people ordered stamps worth $10,000, and soon postal offices ran out of stock. Over 20 countries supported the gesture to commemorate the release of
If Shakespeare coined the most authorisms, the poet John Milton offers the most competition, with his tally clocking in at 630 new words, including such familiar words and phrases as ‘earth-shaking’, ‘lovelorn’, ‘fragrance’, ‘by hook or crook’, and ‘pandemonium’.
Mind you, not everything Milton came up with stood the test of time, or that of necessity: few later generations found much use for Milton’s authorisms such as ‘ensanguined’, ‘emblazonry’ or ‘horrent’!
The early litterateurs had the opportunity to establish themselves in a language that was still growing. Geoffrey Chaucer, Ben Jonson, John Donne and Sir Thomas Moore also are credited with several authorisms each.
Chaucer gave the English such essentials as ‘bagpipe’ and ‘universe’, while Moore contributed ‘anticipate’ and ‘ f act’. Ben Jonson i s said t o have invented 558 words, John Donne 342. English grew beautifully in their care.
Later writers had to contend with the fact that so many words had already been invented that there was less need
DIFFERENT EXPRESSIONS
“The Pattachitra [cloth-based scroll painting] painters of the east portray Kali as she is worshipped in the region, while the Gond artists have their own artistic expressions... be it the veneration of Kali or Deepawali, the artists have their way of celebrating shakti and the festival of lights,” adds Puri.
In the south, where some of the mythological stories connected to the festival come from the north, Deepawali is celebrated a day before the festival in the north, with lots of light, less noise (though this is also changing). On the no-moon night (amavasya), the goddess of wealth is venerated.
There are several Indian folk-art forms and traditions (Mandana, Chitera and Thapa) that are drawn/painted during Diwali. The Mandana paintings of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are done by women who chalk-paint their houses with different designs during the festival season. The root design of a ‘Deepawali ka Mandana’ is invariably enclosed within a circle or a series of lines drawn parallel to the lines and angles of the original design. The Thapa drawings – the stamping done by the palm of the hands – entail certain ritual observances. The Thapas of Lakshmi depict the goddess seated on a lotus or with a lotus in her hand, and is done with vermillion.
Chitera or Chitravan are wall paintings done by professional painters (mostly men from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan). They draw inspiration from religious narrat i ves . During
Diwali, Lakshmi is
A look at some of the celebrations centered on light, from around the world LANTERN FESTIVAL, China: Children carry red paper lanterns symbolising good fortune, on the final day of Chinese New Year celebrations.
LAS FALLAS, Spain: Every March, ninots, or statues of papier-mache, cardboard, wood etc, depicting satirical scenes or current events, are created and destroyed.
FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS, USA: Floats made from lights take to the streets - there’s a Starship Enterprise with 48,000 LED bulbs, a smoke-spewing 95-ft-long dragon, a 70-ft-long horse pulling a wagon, a Snowman, and more. This year’s festival will be held between November 22 and December 31. the stamp. In 2018, the United Nations Postal Administration issued a special stamp sheet to commemorate Diwali. Each stamp sheet has 10 stamps with diyas and lights in various colours
“The struggle between Good & Evil happens everyday @UN. Thank you @Unstamps for portraying our common quest for the triumph of Good over Evil in your 1st set of Diwali stamps on the occasion of the auspicious Festival of Lights,” India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin, had tweeted. Over the years, many other nations, which have a strong Indian diaspora, such as Singapore, Australia, and Canada have also issued Diwali stamps.
“The issuance of stamps signifies the importance of India and its culture. It also spreads the deeper message of the festival, which is about togetherness and joy,” says Rajesh Kumar Bagri, secretary general, the Philatelic Congress of India. for neologisms. Still, Charles Dickens came up with many original terms and phrases, gleaned, it is suggested, from expressions he had heard around the poorer quarters and criminal classes of London.
Mark Twain, Dickson tells us, didn’t take credit for any authorisms at all, but did claim that he popularised the language of the Mississippi River and words derived from the Gold Rushes of Nevada and California (for example, ‘hardpan’, ‘strike it rich’ and ‘bonanza’). depicted seated on a l otus, and either two or four elephants are shown to be bathing her with a kalash held in their trunks. In other parts of I ndia, s uch art - works are also known as aripan and rangoli.
“This has strong religious, moral and cultural aspects for the communities that draw/paint them,” explains Molly Kaushal, head, Janapada Sampada Division, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Delhi.
Over the years, Diwali has become synonymous more with fireworks than lights. With rising awareness about pollution, it’s time to return to its original f orm, and make i t exclusively a festival of lights, and the arts.
It is said that Twain’s talent for creative usage gave new meanings to existing words – like ‘hard-boiled’, which he is credited for turning into a synonym for ‘tough’.
By the 20th century one would imagine the scope for totally new authorisms declined. The popular American writer Sinclair Lewis tried hard to create authorisms that might stick, but none of his invented words – from ‘Kiplingo’ for Rudyard’s bombastic prose to ‘teetotalitarian’ for advocates of Prohibition to ‘philanthrobber’ for a robber baron who dabbled in philanthropy – passed into popular usage, let alone endured.
George Orwell’s 1984 (a date derived from reversing the last two digits of the year it was written, 1948) takes the prize, though, for imparting chilling new meanings to commonly used words and combining some ordinary words into sinister new phrases. These ranged from ‘Big Brother’ as a term to describe a totalitarian dictator, to the more specific ‘doublethink’ and ‘newspeak’ which anticipate the ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’ of our times.