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.