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Journalism of Courage
Diwali is light.
There is a bucket of water in front of me. In it are soaking a whole Three Bears family of mud diyas. Small diyas, big diyas, medium-sized diyas. My job is to drain the water from them and line them up on the roof so the late October sun can dry them off. Later, my sisters and I will retrieve them from the roof and Mummy will place them all on a tray and fill them carefully with oil. The cotton wool we have been massaging between our palms to produce grubby and wonky looking wicks will be placed in each one. The tray will be carried with great care so as not to spill the oil and individual diyas will be placed all around the house. Right after the Diwali puja, we will all be given candles and with the air of People Performing Very Important And Potentially Deadly Tasks in Brand New Clothes, we will light all the diyas till the house is sparkling and our hearts are bursting at all the mithai that is ours to plunder and all the crackers that are ours to burst and the diwali dinner that has had us salivating all day as it cooks.
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Diwali is beauty.
My kids are little; and like all little kids—ferociously talented artists. Outside our little apartment, I am getting ready to do a rangoli showing Goddess Lakshmi’s feet entering our home, around which we will place our diyas. As kids, Ma used to make us dip our fists in a rice and water paste and stamp them and then make toes to represent her feet, but I am painting them using paint and a brush. The kids want to do this all by themselves. I want the entrance of our home to look nice, but I also have Diwali dinner to cook, so they get free rein. I come back an hour later to find Jurassic Park has been reproduced on the gray stone floor, many many many dinosaurs who never lived within a million years of each other are cavorting together in Camlin Brilliant White on my apartment landing. T-Rex has the singular honour of being the mount of Goddess Lakshmi, that tiny head is beaming at being chosen to carry a ginormous pair of distinctly un-goddess like feet. The paleontological inaccuracy, the spread of it across the entire landing—it is mesmerisingly, mind bendingly hideous. It is also the most stunning Diwali rangoli my home has ever seen.
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Diwali is love.
It’s Diwali, but it’s not Diwali. The children’s grandmother, their Dadi, passed away unexpectedly just a few months back. Their grandfather is uncomprehending, nothing in the world is making sense any more. He shakes his head every now and then as if to reset the kaleidoscope of reality to one that still includes her in this world. The kids are young and devastated as much by the loss of Dadi as what it has done to their perennially upbeat and indulgent Dadu, who never seems to be present in this world any more. We don’t know what to do with Diwali this year, how to honour the festival as well as everyone’s grief. Diwali morning, a fresh new Dadu arrives at the door, swinging his car keys. Get in the car, he says to the kids, we have work to do. He steers them to the mithai shop where they order all of Dadi’s and all of the kids’ favourites. He grumbles about how difficult it is to park in the market on Diwali day and makes the kids load up on candles and diyas and shovels their favourite junk food into their basket almost absent mindedly. Once back, he herds them upstairs to set up for Diwali puja in the way they remember Dadi doing. At the puja, he hands everyone a satisfyingly fat Diwali envelope which he has inscribed as being from both of them. He laughs at the children’s joy at seeing their sudden riches, everyone’s favourite mithais taste sweet and true, the tears and the laughter are both heartfelt and the children are giddy with happiness to have got their Dadu back, if only for a day.
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Diwali is strength.
I have moved to a tiny little place far away where I know almost no one. It’s been a wonderful but also a tough year—fresh beginnings are exhilarating, but also privately, savagely excruciating. In the new place, Diwali isn’t celebrated the way I have always celebrated it and I am suddenly very homesick. I want my Diwali, not just any Diwali. I call up my sisters and extended family asking for all the recipes that make up Diwali— for urad dal vadas with sesame seeds placed on them with wet fingers, atta and banana fritters sweetened with jaggery and saunf—the gulgule we would devour by the dozens growing up. My wonderful sisters and cousins and my incredible battery of aunts send me recipes and hacks and tell me their plans and menus for Diwali, reminisce about Diwalis past, about Mummy and Daddy. I send them pictures of my bumbling efforts, they are incredibly encouraging cheerleaders. I make our traditional Diwali dinner, aloo, puris, tart and sweet pumpkin, boondi raita, a dark rich mutton curry, kheer and halwa. And even though I don’t know many people where I live, my Diwali dinner is entirely peopled by people I love and their love makes it especially delicious.
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Diwali is many things.
Or nothing.
Or everything.
To all those celebrating, Happy Diwali. To all those struggling, Happy Diwali. To everyone, everywhere—I hope the joy, the kindness, the love of life, the love of beauty, the love of friends and family that you have put out into this world all your life leads you to the light.
It almost always does.
Happy Diwali.
Vatsala Mamgain loves food, cooking, running, dogs, trees, books and telling long winded stories
