Down memory lane on Deepavali

My Chitthi lighting a busvanam flowerpot today
Photo credit - My cousin Sandhya

I was named for Deepavali.

The year I was born, Deepavali fell on the 11^th day after my birth, which is usually the day of the puṇyāhavācana nāmakaraṇa ceremony - when the mother and baby are rested enough and can safely mingle with the rest of the house and the baby is named. Early that Deepavali morning at the temple house in Tirumazhisai, my father had his gaṅgāsnānam and realized he would name his first born after the festival of the day. Ergo, Deepa. 

Deepavali through the years has meant so many things. 

First, it always meant new clothes. Even the poorest buy clothes once during Deepavali. When we were really small, my parents used to shop by themselves because they didn’t want us anywhere near the rush. So mustard skirt in class 3, a kameez in large blue and pink checks in class 6. Later, we were allowed the honour of accompanying my mom through the madness of picking the precious outfit (when I realized I didn't necessarily have better taste than my parents) and navigating the rush was the highlight of the pre-Diwali prep. One year we went to Purasaiwalkam, the Madhar Sha stores were the largest in the area. There were lots of semi-permanent and make-shift street vendors selling everything from underwear to frocks and handkerchiefs. Another year we went to Chor Bazaar on a neighbour's recommendation - that was a single narrow lane somewhere in T. Nagar, with a large wall on one side and tiny shops on the other, raised from the ground level and set into the wall so one could only shop from the counter at waist level. Hundreds of men, women and children squeezed past each other, shouted over each other, pulled hangers from each other. I wouldn't have the courage to step into that lane today. But that year, my sister picked out the most expensive thing we had ever bought - a pale pink satin frock with puffed sleeves, satin bows and a billowing skirt. It was her princess dream in Rs. 600.     

Once on Ranganathan Street in T. Nagar, that magical shopping area in Chennai that exists in its own bubble no matter what goes in the outside world, we lost each other for a while. Yelling and waving and finding each other in the parallel files of people going both ways and then hugging each other and making a fast exit – that was a surreal Diwali experience. Ranganathan Street was also known for the one-hour tailors – buy the salwar kameez material, give it off to the one-hour tailor, pick up your stitched dress after the rest of your shopping. Et voila! Saves a return trip and can always buy last minute material the day before Diwali. 

Then, Deepavali meant bhakshanam - sweets and savouries. Isn’t it wonderful how we used specialized terms for the food we consume? Bhakshanam are the food item munch and chomp on – snacks. Lehiyam – from the root, liḥ, which gives rise to lick – are the things we need to lick. Pānakam – to drink. Smoking is called dhūmrapāna – drinking smoke. Tamil also uses “kudiththal” – to drink, when describing smoking. Anyways, back to our bhakshanam – unlike the bhakshanam made for other festivals that are prasādam and therefore not to be eaten till the pūjā is over, Deepavali bhakshanam has no such restriction. We could sample and munch away to our heart’s content as soon as the murukku was ladled out of the oil or the somāsis were plated. With snacks, came the big exchange with family and friends, starting with the neighbours. Plates of Adhirasam, Murukku, Thenguzhal, 7 cups cake, Mysore Pak, Thengai Barbi (burfi) were all made and exchanged with the usual self-deprecatory remarks about how it wasn’t really as soft and crunchy as it should be, followed by protestations from the receiver on how it really is the crunchiest murukku she has ever tasted and so on. For my mother, the eternal young girl, it was a few days of cooking up yummy delicacies in her usual adventurous, in-the-moment style, all the while saying she doesn’t know a thing about making proper bhakshanam.

With clothes and sweets sorted, Deepavali’s next big attraction was the pattasu - crackers!  That was my father’s department. Every year, his factory workers association accumulated member contributions and gave out a bag of pattasu. The day my father brought home that cloth bag was the actual day we considered Diwali arrived. It had the usual suspects from the Standard company – a judicious mix of lightweight pretty crackers and the vedi that actually burst and made sound. The pretty bunch had busvaanam – the u is pronounced as in cuckoo – flowerpots, surusuruvarthi sparklers, tharai chakaram wheels that went on the ground, sanku chakaram wheels that came with a long thin metal skewers to spike the wheels as they spun (a heroic task that was assigned to dad), saattai whips that one could hold at one end and dangle.  

The vedi set had a gradation of crackers according to size and noise level. The easiest to burst was the pack of “bijli vedi” – a 100 or so single pops also called oosi vedi because they were thin as needles. Then came the Kuruvi vedi slightly bigger, with a sparrow on it. Bigger and louder still was the Lakshmi vedi – with a picture of Goddess Lakshmi on it that we seriously did not consider as offending to the deity – if I ever thought about it, it was perhaps as her participating in the proceedings! Then a set of saravedi strings – 10 or 20 single pops threaded together to burst continuously. Finally a small pack of “atom bombs” – green contraptions made to look like miniature bombs and burst with a single definitive explosive stomach-punching boom.

The pecking order in the colony kids was roughly according to age group and noise level. Those who burst the maximum number saram were looked upon with respect. Then, there were those who only deigned to burst atom bombs. Those who could display their fearlessness by holding the bijli while lighting it and then throwing it in the air while it burst – they ranked the highest. The coolest ones of course were the ones who bought rockets and later, seven shots. The rockets zoomed high and burst in a single or double crack. The seven shots zoomed up and then boomed seven times in different colours that was beautiful to watch. Not for us the resplendent fireworks, they came much later and were in any case too expensive to even dream of.

The night before Deepavali, we arranged all the new clothes and snacks in front of Swami, ambal and other deities in the pūjā. Then there was ritual of making the collective kolam in front of the apartment block. Aunties, akkas and kids came together to make a large kolam with colour powder with a highlight being the Happy Deepavali and Deepavali Nalvazhthukkal in English and Tamil written below it. It was usually late by the time we finished this but we’d still walk a few buildings to the left and right to check out their kolams. Some years, the rain god washed out most of it by morning but we persisted.

We had to wake early on Deepavali morning. We struggled to wake up by 5 am but my mother of course was up much earlier, which we couldn’t understand at the time but that I get now – there is always so much mom stuff to be done that cannot be explained in a list. By the time we brushed and dawdled to the pūjā, she had the oil ready and a tāmbālam plate with chandanam, kunkumam, akshata. The oil was nallennai, til oil, heated up with dried red chilli and some other condiments. We had to take turns sitting on the manakkattai, placed on a freshly drawn rice paste kolam. She first put chandanam and kunkumam on our forehead. Then she took a drop of oil and placed it as a tilak on our forehead, then on the cheeks. It was customary to first oil the face and then the head and body. To leave the face without oil was against the śāstra. Then she oiled the top of the head, hair and then arms and legs. We protested it was too much. Then she sent us off with shikakai powder and new towels for our gangāsnānam. It is believed that Mother Ganga is present in all the waters on the morning of Deepavali, before sunrise. So bathing before sunrise is considered as auspicious as bathing in the waters of River Ganga.

After the bath, amma handed out the New Dress, tipped with kunkumam on the edges. No matter what the colour of the dress, it had to get a little red kunkumam. Once we wore the New Dress, we did namaskaram to the deities and then to amma appa. Then it was time for the marundhu – medicine. It is not surprising that a day of feasting starts with this ball of marundhu, also called Deepavali lehiyam.   It is an ayurvedic lehiyam preparation made of powdered herbs and ghee that keeps the digestive system working in mint condition, in preparation for all the bhakshanam to follow. With that prep, it was time to start the feasting. A plate laden with samplers of all that has been made. We chomped through it in a mad rush, to start the crackers. In between, were all the calls. Once, the landline was installed, we could call from home.  Until then, the watchman would come up and call out and we had to go running to the phone booth at the colony gate. Paati, mama, perimma and others called and asked, “Gangasnanam aachaa?” We had better have had our baths by then! We also had to do delivery duty – give out bhakshanam plates to all the houses in the building.

Every Deepavali morning was the unspoken race to be the first ones out, bursting crackers. The chief hurdles in this colony-wide competition were the uncompromising mothers who never skipped the gangāsnānam, pudhu dress, marundhu, bhakshanam routine. When we finally got down to the common area, a small strip of sand in front of each building, it was all out war to create maximum impact. After a few hours of unfettered noise, most of us wound up by 9 am to get to breakfast and the “special” TV programmes, but not before a slow walk from one end of the colony to the other, assessing the remains of the day in front of each wing, rating the residents on quantity and variety of debris!  

The first TV programme that we gathered around was the Deepavali pattimanram – a passionate debate usually on a polarising topic around family and women on the likes of – Who takes care of the family more – the working woman or the home maker?, Who is more important – the husband or the wife?, Who is right – the mother-in-law or the daughter-in-law? – you get the drift. Sometimes they were daring and chose edgier topics like ‘What is sweeter – love or marriage?’ The speakers were regulars on the debate circuits, were passionate and fiercely and good-humouredly ribbed each other and everyone took sides, knowing well the ‘judgement’ by the venerable Solomon Pappiah, the standard “Naduvar” judge would be in favour of women/ wives/ daughters, to keep the TG happy.  After that we had celebrities telling us how they spent Diwali, which I am ashamed to admit, we lapped up. This was followed by lunch, siesta, more snacks, more crackers, a late dinner. Invariably there were guests through the day – neighbours, uncles, aunts, paati, thatha, all bearing their bhakshanams and bhakshanam stories.

Some Deepavalis stand out.

2004. I didn’t realize while picking out available dates that it was Deepavali morning, but that 11^th of November, I took the GRE. It was an emotional day, as I had quit my job and moved back home, hoping to study Saiva Siddhanta and was applying to the Sanskrit and South Asia departments of top US schools. Of course people thought I was crazy. I didn’t even know if what I was doing made sense but I was driven by something deeper within beyond any reason. So the morning of the test, my prayer was this – Look, I don’t know if what I am doing is right, but if I am meant to study Saiva Siddhanta, please give me a sign. I had worked right until my last day so I had very little preparation. I had signed up for some classes but there was too much happening at work to take more than a couple of practice tests. Then I moved back home and in a week, had the test. Anyways, I hoped for a decent score to justify even applying. But I scored an unbelievable 1600/1600. It was a loud and clear message! 😊

But my best Diwali was 1994. It was my first Deepavali away from home, at an engineering college hostel 1000km away. While the rest of the world sent letters and sweets to its children studying in other cities, my parents bundled their two other kids aged 13 and 9, a kerosene stove and sacks of provisions, loaded them all in a second class train on an LTC tour and landed in my city. And while in my 17 year old wisdom, I braced for major embarrassment in front of my shiny new peers, they charmed the socks off my urbane batchmates. They set up home in a government guest house, making friends with the housekeeper whose language they didn’t speak (who fell in love with them so much, he took us on a beautiful city darshan culminating with a visit to his family – mom and 5 sisters in a single room shack – but more on him some other day), and cooked Diwali sweets and savouries. They invited some of my friends for a stayover, and treated them to the complete “Deepavali special” of early morning oil bath, kolam, Deepavali marundhu, yummy snacks and tons of food and lots and lots of pure love, mostly unsaid, but unfailingly shown in action. My parents! Oh god, my parents! They are truly role models for selflessness and just pure ability to create joy.

This year, I was especially hurt and confused by various government orders banning crackers, banning Diyas, some police brutality against small shopkeepers and their children – how can one can cancel this glorious festival of love? And all these messages of “light a lamp” – how can that even substitute for that this festival is? I am sure each of us has a unique family tradition, our festivals are occasions for this special togetherness that is a bond of our heritage, reflected in the bhakshanam we make, the marundhu we swallow grudgingly and even single surusuruvarthi mathapoo sparkler my mother lights because it is śāstra to light atleast one sparkler on Diwali.  How can one replace this with superficial consumerist family photo-op moments?

Our first reaction as a family was to amp it all up as a sort of ‘So there!’ response. But I realized - I don’t want to celebrate as a way of showing anybody anything. It has its rhythm, its joy, its reason, its madness. Which is why I sat down and wrote this – to share what Deepavali means to me and how I will always celebrate it from the heart, and not to spite anyone else – no matter how misguided and provocative they are.

Today as I watch my daughter and nephews fuss about the oil and hastily put on their clothes and do namaskaram to their grandparents and pick at the bhakshanam and rush out to burst crackers, I am just so grateful. It is a deep sense of fulfilment to be able to pass on this eternal sanatana dharma from your parents to your children though I am a frail vessel. Nevertheless, however unfit I am, I am always thankful for the privilege.