Last week was Diwali, the Indian festival of lights.
Once this was a time when Indian Americans would feel wistful as they looked at pictures of India lit up for Diwali. Now many schools in America have a holiday for Diwali.
Even President Donald Trump had a Diwali celebration in the White House with a Diwali lamp or diva.
TRUMP1:
Sacrilegious as it might sound I learned to truly enjoy Diwali only when I moved to the United States.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
In India I enjoyed the trays of Diwali sweets and nuts but I hated the loud fireworks.
FIREWORKS
Their deafening bangs would make my heart thud. The neighborhood boys would try to out do each other in their derring do, sometimes exploding fireworks under an upturned metal bucket to get maximum bang for the buck. I would wince but never say anything, too afraid to be exposed as a wimp.
In California, Diwali meant good Indian food and a few sparklers in the backyard at some friend’s Diwali party. It was Diwali without the bang. Sipping my glass of crisp Chardonnay I would listen as friends reminisced about Diwalis “back home”.
“Next year I really want to go back to India for a real Diwali,” someone would say. I would smile and nod noncommittally and sip my wine. I felt very much at home in a California Diwali.
Anyway in Kolkata we had grown up more with Kali Puja rather than Diwali. Kali is one of the fiercest goddesses of the Hindu pantheon. But Kali, blue or black, naked and fierce, tongue dripping blood, holding a garland of decapitated heads was hard to explain to Americans. I could not explain to my American friends, that where I came from she was also a mother.
She has a whole genre of songs dedicated to her, Shyamasangeet, that imagine her as the mother who is as dark as the night.
KALI SONG
It’s a rare adoration in India of something that’s not “Fair and Lovely.” None of that translated well across the cultural divide. So I just smiled and nodded when people wished me Happy Diwali.
Returning to India I found Diwali had gotten bigger and glitzier. In fact Diwali sales sometimes felt bigger than Diwali itself.
The entire Indian fall was just sale after sale as Ganesh festival merged into Durga Puja festival into Diwali. In her book OTP Please! Online Buyers, Sellers and Gig Workers in South Asia, Vandana Vasudevan writes that these days if there is one festival that unites a culturally diverse country like India it is Amazon’s Great Indian Festival. That might have upstaged all other festivals she jokes.
DRUMS
The first year I returned to India I remember hearing the sound of drums or dhaaks while walking down the street, a sound that usually heralds Durga Puja or Kali Puja. But these drummers were outside a mobile store trying to add a festive touch to the various mobile recharge options being advertised. At my gym colourful posters advertised post-Diwali weight loss specials.
Everyone complained that Diwali didn’t feel the same anymore. It was all about consumerism. No one bothered to make sweets at home. Every retailer was trying to raise the bar from the previous year’s Diwali. Meanwhile Government regulations and court rulings were trying to make fireworks less noisy. I wasn’t unhappy about the last at least though it was still quite loud. But I remember wondering if amidst this shiny hyper consumer Diwali I would miss the simplicity of my California backyard Diwali.
Then as I walked down to the market in Kolkata I noticed someone selling a pile of mixed greens on the day before Kali Puja. A mix of 14 saags or 14 greens to represent the 14 generations of ancestors whose spirits are said to return to this world at this time. The Instagram handle Ma Mashir Kitchen listed what greens should be part of the mix
GREENS
Whether there are actually 14 kinds in the mix I got, and whether it’s the right 14, is unclear. But I took it as an article of faith as I sautéd the greens at home. And I went to the market and bought little clay lamps, that are unchanged from every Diwali I’ve known.
Mixed greens on the plate, little clay lamps on a moonless night, a shower of fire in the sky above. That is homecoming Diwali enough for me.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW