Deepavali Flash(back)

This one is especially for all Indians living abroad. I wrote this several years ago when I wanted to explain what Deepavali was all about to children growing up here in the US. 

For children in India, Deepavali is a time of magic. As in everything else Indian, there are a number of regional flavors to it, but Deepavali is truly a national festival.

I grew up in Tamil Nadu and have wonderful memories of Deepavali. This is a day when we wanted to get up early – I mean really early, say 4 am or even before – despite the fact that we had to have a bath immediately and an oil bath at that (there is always a catch, isn't there?). No, we were not crazy, as you will soon see. For those of you who may not have seen the hour of 4 am, believe me it was anything but quiet on Deepavali at 4 am. If you were still sleeping, you would wake up to the deafening sounds of firecrackers.

Being the first on the block to light up the fireworks gave one bragging rights. So my brothers and I got up early and took our oil bath. My mother would have prepared the oil the previous day and she would apply it to our hair. She had strong hands, so we were quickly awake and alert. Then came the bath in warm water with “cheekkai” (a herbal shampoo powder) to wash off the oil. In our hurry to get ready and light the fireworks, we would get the bath over so quickly that half the oil did not get washed off. The leftover oil would slowly descend to our faces during the rest of the day. We then got to wear new clothes, which were arranged neatly in the pooja room. Once we got our clothes on, we would rush out and light a candle from which we could light the sparklers or light up the incense stick with which to set off the loud crackers.

The whole idea was to light up the entire neighborhood with sparklers and other types of fireworks. Obviously, you had to do this while it was still dark. There was a wide variety of fireworks available - the flowerpot, the ‘Tharai chakram’ or ground wheel, the ‘Vishnu chakram’ or spinning wheel, rockets and so on. Rockets lit up the skies soaring over homes and palm trees. Flowerpots would give off intense colourful displays of fireworks. These displays would be punctuated with the loud bursting of some cracker or the other – these had names too, like the sparrow, the electric, Shivaji, Lakshmi and Vishnu. These crackers looked like sticks of dynamite and had fuses made of string and paper extending out. It was quite a thrill to light the fuse, retreat to a safe distance and watch the explosion – the flash and the bang. There was also the atom bomb (relax, they had no nuclear content), which was the loudest. My favorites were the string crackers. These came in strings of 50, 100, etc. to one with 10,000! You set off one off these and the individual sticks go off in tandem and the effect was magical. The 10,000-cracker garland sounded like a couple of motorbikes accelerating real hard and went on and on!

After a couple of hours of fun outside, we would come back into the house for an early snack of delicious sweets and savories. Deepavali was an occasion for making some traditional dishes as well as for trying out novel recipes. After this feast, there was the traditional Ginger lehyam (halwa of sorts), which was consumed to prevent indigestion. How thoughtful of our forefathers to think of everything! Actually, this was quite tasty in itself.

Mid-morning was a slow period spent exchanging notes with friends. We would also compare the amount of debris in front of different houses left from the firecrackers – these were packed with paper, bits of which got strewn all over when the tightly packed charge inside exploded. We would have exhausted most of the crackers (some were saved for the night) and would start unstringing the string crackers so we could light them one by one. There were the inevitable duds among these, which fail to go off for some reason. We would open these and empty the charge inside into a paper. When you lit the paper, it went up in glorious smoke, but this could be a dangerous game. There were always reports of some kid getting his hand burnt doing this.

This was also the time for some pranks. Some kids would light a string of crackers and throw an old pot over it for some special effects. The pot danced around with muffled sounds coming from inside. Or they would light an atom bomb and put a coconut shell over it. The shell would fly an impressive distance when the bomb exploded. You could say this was the educational side to Deepavali on the streets, trying out Newton’s laws of motion. And so the day went on with eating, chatting, playing, bursting crackers, visiting friends, and did I say eating?  Everybody had a great time. 

Deepavali literally means ‘Row of lamps’. According to tradition (one of many, I should add), Deepavali was the day when Lord Krishna slew Narakasura, a powerful demon. Before dying, Narakasura felt remorse for all the oppression he had inflicted and begged for forgiveness. He also requested that the day of his death should be celebrated by the people with joy and pomp. Hence, we celebrate the day as the festival of lights and sound. As far as kids were concerned, we had a soft corner for Narakasura because he gave us Deepavali and no other festival captured our imagination like Deepavali.

Dark Elixir

As I surveyed the hot liquid in my cup, I felt contented. The coffee that I held in my hand had turned out really well. I had recently purchased some peaberry coffee that seemed to match the Coorg variety closely and had been roasted to the perfect shade of brown. I had then ground up a handful and made the brew in the traditional south Indian filter. Adding hot milk to this resulted in the highly satisfying collaboration that was as close to the classic Chennai filter coffee as I could get and sent me down memory lane.

When I was young, some days I would be up early and get to watch my mother make coffee. Brewing coffee demanded a careful and exacting process. She would first pass the top half of the filter a couple of times over the open flame to ensure that the pores were not clogged. After that, she would place the required measure of coffee powder into the filter and compact it lightly with her fingers. This will be covered by the loose plunger over the powder to hold it in place. Then she would boil water and add the boiling water to the filter ever so gently using a ladle. After that, you had to wait for the decoction to drip down to the bottom half of the filter. During this time, she would put the milk on the stove to boil and continue with her regular morning routine of singing bhajans or other songs. Coffee was strictly for the grown-ups then and I did not get to taste it till a few years later. But I used to be fascinated by the coffee-making process and was content to sit and watch. And I still recall some of the songs mother used to sing.

Getting the beans roasted and ground at the local coffee store was itself a thrilling experience. Which young boy will not be thrilled by the big commercial roasters and grinders at the store! The whir, the heat and the aroma in these places is simply enchanting. I can remember carrying freshly ground coffee, packed in non-porous wax paper bag and still warm, back home after purchasing it from one of these shops.

There was a time when we lived in the foothills of the Western Ghats where we could buy the beans pretty much off the plantation. We used to roast them at home using a drum-shaped roaster that had to be turned by hand over a coal fire. The whole house smelled like a coffee shop then. We also had a hand mill to grind the roast. When you combined the brew from this process with fresh milk heated to the right temperature, you could count on a heavenly cup of coffee.

Coffee does not have the long history of tea, but it has certainly captured the world market despite its relatively recent entrance. It seems that we owe the discovery of coffee to some enterprising goatherds in Ethiopia several centuries ago. Upon noticing an unusual perkiness in their goats, they deduced that it arose from ingesting the berries of a certain bush. This itself is an amazing feat, considering that goats will eat almost anything. They then decided that what was good for the goats was good for the (adventurous) goatherds. To cut a long story short, it was a small bite for a goat but a giant gulp for mankind.

Tea was introduced into India by the British, but coffee came before that. The story of its arrival in India and subsequent cultivation sounds like 'Jack and the Beanstalk'. It is said that a pilgrim named Baba Budan smuggled seven coffee beans out of Yemen after falling for the coffee he tasted there. Yes, he had to smuggle the seeds because the Arabs, who controlled the coffee market then, did not allow the export of seeds. It was perhaps a strange thing to do after a pilgrimage, but I think he had the right idea. Anyway, he planted the seeds in the hills of Karnataka and the rest is history.

When I first came to America, I was in for a rude shock. I just was not ready for drip coffee. The only kind of coffee I drank then was good, South Indian, well, I should just say Indian filter coffee, since there is no North Indian filter coffee. The drip coffee was served with a white powder (non-dairy creamer) which never seemed to dissolve well. Back then, you did not have the now ubiquitous Starbucks and other coffee shops. Drip coffee was pretty much all you got. I used to marvel at those who drank it black. And even more at those who drank decaffeinated coffee with non-dairy creamer and artificial sweetener. I mean, at that point, could you even call it coffee?

Anyway, my first taste of drip coffee was pretty bad. I might have given up on it altogether but then I tried tea the next time. It was far worse and could only be placed, I imagine, slightly above dish water. Teabags that have been sitting open to the elements, with tepid water to steep them in, are an insult to serious tea drinkers. So I gave up on drinking tea in restaurants entirely and decided to give the local coffee brew another try. I must admit that I was able to get used to it slowly, especially with actual milk or half-and-half. It took some time before I was able to appreciate coffee in different formats.

Fortunately, America has had a coffee explosion in the last twenty or so years. Myriads of hot and cold coffees of various gourmet varieties are now available practically at every corner. One can get one's coffee made to specifications, whether 'one-shot, low-fat, non-foam latte' or 'non-fat, double-shot, low-foam mocha'. But my favorite still remains the filter coffee of my erstwhile home. I end with this link to an article, Meter Long Coffee, which I think is a fine tribute to that dark elixir that I miss very much.

(Photo courtesy: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Filter_kaapi.JPG)