Imagine Christmas gift-giving, in early-summer weather, with the soundtrack of July Fourth, the new clothes of Easter, the food-and-family of Thanksgiving: that's Diwali. It's a time for lights, flowers, shopping, some religious ceremonies, and days of firecrackers and fireworks (and this being India, the pyrotechnics are exuberant and entirely unregulated). Last night the incessant explosions reached a crescendo around midnight, but continued with only slight abatement right through the rest of the night and into the morning. (The windows are open, because it's not hot enough for AC now.) Some blasts were extremely close, and at times I wondered how the people of Sarajevo, for instance, could have borne their bombardment. I had leisure to wonder, because sleeping was out of the question.
However, I was so fortunate to be invited to share the day in a home. After last-minute shopping, my host, Rouma, and I returned to prepare for the late-afternoon arrival of the Brahmin pandit, or priest, who would visit the house to do the puja. This service is meant to ask Lakshmi and Ganesh, especially, to bring prosperity and peace to the home: the point of all the beautiful lights and flowers adorning houses and shops is to entice the goddess of wealth to visit. I'd offered to help, but was given the most pleasant tasks: pulling petals off roses, to heap in a marble lotus-shaped bowl, and bathing and garlanding the small bronze elephant-headed Ganesh figure.
The preparations included garlanding the various gods; lighting small candles at the house-door; spreading a cloth over the carpet, and arranging on it bowls or thalis (steel trays) of flowers, fruit, sweets, water in a steel cup, a clay oil lamp, and cushions for sitting. The pandit arrived, dressed in a pure white kurta-pyjama (having visited at least eight or ten houses already, for the same ceremony, with many more to come that day), and we all sat cross-legged as he lit incense, chanted continually in Sanskrit (sounding quite like Gregorian chant) while ringing a small brass bell; put a red-paste mark and rice-grains on our foreheads, instructed us to shower the small images of the gods with marigold petals, and to offer the oil-lamp smoke, to garland each other, to offer the fruit, to sprinkle the images with water, etc. He tied a red thread around our wrists, dropped a silver coin into a small bowl of milk, and after making the offerings (prasad), gave us each a handful to eat: puffed rice, a wafer-shaped sugar lump, fruit, a lentil sweet, sweetened rice cooked with saffron. Finally, he blew several chest-resonating notes on a conch: if the gods had dozed off during the service, they'd be alert to our presence now!
In the evening we lit dozens of little clay oil-lamps and arranged them on the roof-terrace, the balconies, and the sitting-room. A couple of young women from Spain, and a Frenchwoman my age, arrived for dinner, although we had to retreat from the terrace to the only slightly quieter sitting-room, as the explosions increased. The Indian food was superb, the conversation thoroughly interesting, and I did valiantly attempt to sleep at midnight, when the guests departed. I'll try to nap today before heading for the airport: maybe the sleepless night will help me re-adjust to the 9.5-hour time change . . . .
However, I was so fortunate to be invited to share the day in a home. After last-minute shopping, my host, Rouma, and I returned to prepare for the late-afternoon arrival of the Brahmin pandit, or priest, who would visit the house to do the puja. This service is meant to ask Lakshmi and Ganesh, especially, to bring prosperity and peace to the home: the point of all the beautiful lights and flowers adorning houses and shops is to entice the goddess of wealth to visit. I'd offered to help, but was given the most pleasant tasks: pulling petals off roses, to heap in a marble lotus-shaped bowl, and bathing and garlanding the small bronze elephant-headed Ganesh figure.
The preparations included garlanding the various gods; lighting small candles at the house-door; spreading a cloth over the carpet, and arranging on it bowls or thalis (steel trays) of flowers, fruit, sweets, water in a steel cup, a clay oil lamp, and cushions for sitting. The pandit arrived, dressed in a pure white kurta-pyjama (having visited at least eight or ten houses already, for the same ceremony, with many more to come that day), and we all sat cross-legged as he lit incense, chanted continually in Sanskrit (sounding quite like Gregorian chant) while ringing a small brass bell; put a red-paste mark and rice-grains on our foreheads, instructed us to shower the small images of the gods with marigold petals, and to offer the oil-lamp smoke, to garland each other, to offer the fruit, to sprinkle the images with water, etc. He tied a red thread around our wrists, dropped a silver coin into a small bowl of milk, and after making the offerings (prasad), gave us each a handful to eat: puffed rice, a wafer-shaped sugar lump, fruit, a lentil sweet, sweetened rice cooked with saffron. Finally, he blew several chest-resonating notes on a conch: if the gods had dozed off during the service, they'd be alert to our presence now!
In the evening we lit dozens of little clay oil-lamps and arranged them on the roof-terrace, the balconies, and the sitting-room. A couple of young women from Spain, and a Frenchwoman my age, arrived for dinner, although we had to retreat from the terrace to the only slightly quieter sitting-room, as the explosions increased. The Indian food was superb, the conversation thoroughly interesting, and I did valiantly attempt to sleep at midnight, when the guests departed. I'll try to nap today before heading for the airport: maybe the sleepless night will help me re-adjust to the 9.5-hour time change . . . .
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