Coffeeland News wishes all its readers a Very Happy Deepavali!
Caveat: This piece was written nearly a decade ago and published in the Deccan Chronicle. It is being presented here with some added embellishments and cosmetic changes. I am counting on the fact that more people would not have read it than have. And among those few who have, only a handful might recall having read it. The passage of time has done little to change anything about how we Indians celebrate Deepavali and Diwali. Read on.
I was born into an orthodox Tamil Brahmin family, and nowhere are the hallmarks of orthodoxy more strictly observed than in our religious festivals. The plethora of rituals almost every month kept me in a constant daze, but the culinary feast that followed each auspicious day, was mouth-watering.  Deepavali, or the festival of lights (and noise), perhaps best typified the rigours and revelries in households such as ours. In Indian mythology Deepavali, amongst other things, symbolically celebrates the demonic Ravana getting his comeuppance against the virtuous Rama – good prevailing over evil, as narrated in the Ramayana. As if you didn’t know.
Let us examine these rigorous practices more closely. Deepavali dawned for our family well before the sun broke blearily over the eastern horizon. We were woken up at about 3.30 am or some such ungodly hour, our faces still deeply sleep-lined. Before we realised what was happening, my mother would pour a ladleful of hot nalla ennai (gingelly oil) on our heads, and thereafter over the rest of our bodies. After allowing the sanctified unguent to soak into our system, we had to have our ‘oil bath,’ and try as we might the sticky, oily feeling never left us for days. Our eyes burned due to the early rising and the well-oiled face, but that was a small price to pay to keep the gods and my mother in good humour. The shikakai podi (Acacia concinna powder) in lieu of soap, only added to the pungent, but not unpleasant, odour we carried around for days on end.
By half-past four, we were dressed to kill in our brand new clothes, usually a half-sleeve, bush shirt and a veshti, which were kept overnight in the prayer room for divine blessings, liberally smeared with sandalwood paste and kungumam (kum kum) the stains of which, like the oil, never left our clothes. After paying our obeisance to all the framed gods and statuettes displayed in the puja room, it was time for some fun, though we were still groggy from sleep deprivation. The cuckoo clock had just tweeted five. ‘Tweeted’ means something entirely different today, but the early cuckoo bird, looking for worms to catch, was ahead of its time.
The ‘fun’ consisted primarily of lighting sparklers and bursting crackers, and various other exciting but potentially dangerous playthings like rockets, chakras and phooljadis (flower pots) that could have been seriously injurious to health. I have never known a single Deepavali pass without some poor child sustaining grievous bodily harm. If not properly supervised, irreparable damage could be done to one’s eyes, and the decibel level of the crackers bursting has caused many a child’s hearing to be permanently impaired. I still believe my brother’s hearing problem was a direct consequence of a pataas going off before he realised the wick had even caught. Thereafter, stuffed with earphones and listening to the brilliant G.N. Balasubramaniam’s Todi or Khambhoji all night long, could only have exacerbated his hearing further. For myself, I exercised adequate caution during the festival, keeping a safe distance from all incendiary objects, even at the risk of being branded a sissy. Discretion was the better part of valour. My valour, at any rate.
Somehow the time had now crept up to 7 am, time for some toothsome bakshanams – crispy crunchies and a variety of sweetmeats. Any other kind of meat was unthinkable! After prostrating before our parents, we were expected to visit neighbouring friends and relatives and seek the blessings of our elders. Our house was also constantly visited by a number of family friends. It was more like a visitation. It must be said that the feeling of gaiety and good cheer was manifest, and the air reeked of a heady admixture of sulphur (from the crackers) and the medicinal but tasty lehiyam, a highly concentrated (and consecrated) paste made of clarified butter and all manner of spices, deliciously sweetened with jaggery – a most efficacious digestive. The Ayurveda chappies are making a killing out of lehiyam.
As an aside, elders in our community greet each other on Deepavali with the Tamil salutation, ‘Ganga snaanam aachaa?’ This refers metaphorically to the much-touted oil bath, the imagined source of the holy water from your tap or shower being the holy of holies, the Ganga or Ganges river. Never mind if the ablution actually took place in your humble bathroom in downtown Chennai. As someone whose name I cannot recall said, ‘Blind faith is the only kind.’ The only Blind Faith I followed as a teenager was a rock band from the 60s!
As the clock crawled towards 10 am, we were all ready for the traditional Deepavali lunch, with all the usual Brahminical fixings topped off with a delicious paayasam. By noon, after the exertions of a long morning, we could not keep our eyes open. The post-prandial afternoon siesta was sound and deep. It also marked the end of the festivities, leaving us at a loose end for the rest of the day. This is pretty much the way families like ours from the south celebrated Deepavali.
Outside of south India, particularly in the northern states, and through poetic license, that can be extended to include the east and western parts of India (in fact, anything that is not the south of the Vindhyas), Deepavali metamorphoses into Diwali. Diwali, to the best of my knowledge, involves no rigours whatsoever. Only revelries, and how! They can wake up whenever they want, do whatever they like, and all the action happens after sundown. While some superficial concession is made for religious observances, to show there’s no ill-feeling, the general idea is to have a good time. Good food, followed by teen patti, the Indian equivalent of the well-known gambling card game, Flush or Poker. Lest we forget, gambling has a religious throwback to that other monumental epic, the Mahabharata. A dice game, said to be an ancient form of Ludo, is referred to in the ancient texts variously as Pachisi, Chausar or Pasha. I looked that up, in case you’re wondering.
For spiritual uplift, the traditional Indian milk-based stimulant, bhang, is consumed in large quantities and pretty much everyone gets sloshed to the gills. It’s all a bit Bacchanalian, but a rollicking time is a given. Dinner is late and the feast royal, and almost certainly not vegetarian. The sweets are rich and massively calorific. The north Indians don’t believe in doing things by half. They spread themselves high, wide and plentiful, and throw themselves into the festivities with oodles of vigour. Rigour is strictly for their southern counterparts.
Days after the festive fireworks, our streets tend to resemble the blood-spattered detritus of a battlefield. The red wrappings of the crackers, mangled sparklers and blackened flower pots turn our roads into a red sea. Or even a black sea. To say nothing of the sulphuric fumes and pollutants that remain heavily laden in the atmosphere. Small wonder the Supreme Court put the kybosh on the use of firecrackers in the capital till November 1.
Let us also spare a thought for all the stray animals that roam our streets running helter-skelter for shelter as the bursting crackers literally drive our poor, dumb chums, crackers. Not to forget our terrified household pets – canine, feline and avian – whose hyper-sensitive auditory canals send them scooting under the beds for sanctuary or have them flapping about helplessly in their gilded cages. Then again, when do the powers-that-be ever empathise with what our beloved fauna are going through?
There you have it. Deepavali or Diwali, one festival in the same country, but celebrated in vastly different ways. The way I look at it, to each their own and there is no room for being judgemental. If a sense of unctuous religiosity is palpable amongst south Indians but missing in the north, the latter makes up for it by celebrating the festival in a markedly Rabelaisian and boisterous manner. Either way, it’s a public holiday and a splendid time is guaranteed for all. Just mind the fireworks.
To all our readers, I extend a very happy, bright, colourful and safe Deepavali. And Diwali.
Published with permission from Mr. Suresh Subrahmanyan. He blogs at – https://sureshsubrahmanyan.blog/
