The true spirit of Diwali
As I walk through the light festooned markets of Bur Dubai participating in the pre-festival buying frenzy, I cannot help but walk down memory lane. Those were times when Diwali was not just about senseless shopping but all about the family get-togethers and spring cleaning with an obsessive pride to be the best home on the block.
The bustle would begin 10 days before the big day when we four kids would don our overalls and get ready with the business of clearing cobwebs, dusting the tiny little attic and washing the five-year-old plastic paint on the walls.
It was back-breaking work, but we were always gung-ho like a bunch of merry labourers. It seemed like a welcome break from doing our holiday homework. Our tiny transistor used to be placed on a stool in the marked room and tuned into our favourite radio programme to keep up our morale. Mother would make an interesting picnic lunch that we would munch on-the-go, with cups of steaming ginger tea.
Our camaraderie was at its polite best with a call for a truce during festivities that was mutually agreed upon by all siblings. We would set aside our petty squabbles and bitter rivalries and plunge headlong into moving furniture, washing walls, window grills, working one room a day. Work was usually done with so much cheer and aplomb for an entire week during our Diwali vacations that it could put any corporate collaboration to shame.
On day seven it was time to polish the silver and the brass figurines, make sweets and savouries. Mother made it a point to leave sweet-making to the penultimate day to save us from the sin of polishing off the goodies before it could be offered to the deity.
So although our home looked squeaky clean and wafted with the heavenly aroma of roasting lentils and fried sweets, we had to check our impulse to grab the goody jar and sit sedately, mending the buttons on last year’s tunic, sewing new sequins on old dupattas (shawl-like scarves). Newness was largely limited to the feeling of freshness, cleanliness and divinity that we felt descending upon our hearts as we steadily moved towards D-Day. On the final day, the smell of saffron marigolds, sandalwood incense, the burning ghee of the lamps, lulled us into a heady, mesmerising festive ardour. We would shine with a spiritual aura, solemnly wearing our bright clothes, squatting on floor mats to write on a piece of paper our secret wishes (mostly academic) that dad would place in an earthen jar along with the new pen that was gifted to us.
Vermillion footprints
This was in hope of invoking the deity of learning to enlighten our intellect, alongside our hope of pleasing the deity of wealth too. We would make tiny footprint marks with vermilion and turmeric on the floor — a ‘this way please’ sign to remind the deity to walk into our home rather than the home of my maddening school friend next door who seemed to have the best of everything always. The best part was the mandatory game of cards and the sumptuous Diwali dinner with extended family followed by the coveted display of sparklers outside. No painfully noisy crackers, just the phosphorescent burst of bright stars on the end of the sparkler stick and the brilliant effervescence of the floor displays.
As the night of Diwali descended deeper, sleep would insidiously crawl into our heavy eyes, it seemed like a happy stupor that stealthily stole upon our weary limbs, minds and spirit, a collective impact of the hard work of previous days. We would hit the bed, lost in a bedazzled star spangled world, dreaming of jalebis, rosogollas and laddoos (festive sweets).
Diwali was all about spiritual rejuvenation and family bondings with no commercial trappings or retail therapies.