Diwali evening is approaching in Delhi, a city of 20 million people – imagine nearly two-thirds the population of Canada jammed into the lower Lower Mainland.
Everywhere there are streamers of red, blue, yellow and white lights like waterfalls of light flowing down the walls of buildings large and small. Everywhere people carry home bags with red and gold boxes of sweets. Everywhere there is the intensifying sound of firecrackers, flares and a darkening sky of starry explosives – crackcracksnapcracksnap, boom boom, whooooosh boom snap snap snap … sounds that become so thick, so dense, so total down every street and across every neighbourhood that the dark horizon reverberates like a constant rumbling thunder.
Everywhere people light tapers that sit in small votive containers of oil, then place these in each room corner and entranceway, on each step towards the street, along the tops of yard walls, around front doors.
People spill into their streets with more fireworks, setting every byway ablaze in flashes of brilliant white light. On our street, drummers appear, people begin dancing, a child bounces on his dancing father’s shoulders, laughing. Sweets are passed around. A boy lights a string of crackers, takes a last quick look and runs to his parents … crackcrackcrackcrack …. Up and down the street the night snaps, cracks, booms and whooshes randomly. People dart and yelp and look up: aaaaaahhhhhh. Again and again and again.
Something like this – understated here – describes a piece of the Diwali evening we experienced in Delhi.
One of the most important days in the Hindu calendar, Diwali is a time to celebrate Lord Rama’s rescue of his lover Sita – told in the epic Ramayana. The rescue and homecoming is a victory over the forces of evil. It is definitely a festive time, a time to give thanks, a time to enjoy friends, nowadays a time buy new clothes, to exchange gifts (especially sweets), a time to celebrate the pushing back of darkness with great bursts of light and sound.
Our Delhi Diwali was spent with kindly and generous friends: Santosh and Prem. Tom met Prem through volleyball a year ago in Canada when the two were visiting their daughter and son-in-law. The couple now welcomed us into their home while we were in Delhi. For Santosh and Prem, each day is marked with puja, prayers usually given at a small shrine just off their kitchen. Today, Diwali, special prays are given, especially preceding the evening’s festivities.
Earlier in the day, 11-year-old Shubham and another family member sit at our front entranceway creating on the concrete floor what becomes a vibrant peacock from coloured rice powders.
All day, passersby wish one another a ‘Very happy Diwali’ and exchange gifts, most of which are heavily packaged Indian sweets (many will be re-gifted we are told; a newspaper editorial scolds people for this sweet-giving habit which it calls excessive, wasteful, damaging to the environment and a misplaced form of giving.)
At sunset, Santosh and Prem begin their special Diwali puja. We hear the recitation of a kind of litany, a calming rhythmic incantation, then a sustained tinkling of a bell and more muted lulling appeals and recitations, and again the prolonged tinkling.
Quietening, reverent-feeling. Yet just beyond and surrounding this is a rising crescendo of firecrackers and larger explosives snapping and blasting up and down the street, crackcrackcrack then boooooom, each sound reverberating up our concrete stairwell, sometimes crashing off the building face, lights bursting and sparkling outside the house windows. Prem agrees later that all this can be distracting, ‘but only for a short time’. A patient man who knows Diwali.
Santosh lights many small votive candles and places these, as will others she says, at room entrances, doorways, table tops, corners, on each step down to the street and around the entranceway to the house, already covered in streamers of lights which make the many-coloured peacock glow.
We make our way downstairs and out into the pandemonium. Overhead a whirring scream, a resounding boom. Behind us crackcrackcrack. To our side a fountain of golden light, excited children’s voices. Flares, starry streamers, twirls and bursts of golden sparkling light. The drummers appear, people dance, pass around sweets: halva, chocolate. Happy Diwali! Happy Diwali! people shout. Snapsnapsnapcrackcracksnapnapboom, the dark street flashes, glows, then fades into black, all of us surrounded by shards of red, blue, gold, the night sky bursting with circles of golden stars.
Neighbours drop by later in the evening, some younger than Santosh and Prem, people who greet them by ritually, symbolically touching their feet, as respected elders and friends, ‘uncle’ and ‘auntie’. Close friends here are part of a felt extended ‘family’ where each is designated as some family member – something made complicated for us by the fact that Prem and Santosh have lived in the neighbourhood for decades and have an especially large ‘family’. (Other people we have met are full of disbelief with our answers to questions like: Do your children and grandchildren live with you? No. Do they live nearby? No. Do you see them often? No.)
Grapes and sweets and glasses of ‘Sprite’ are passed around, along with family stories. Laughter, more stories. We are in Santosh and Prem’s sitting room, Prem comfortable as usual on the floor, cross-legged in his easy yogi way rather than like the rest of us in a rectangle of heavy wood-framed chairs with tasteful cream and burgundy cushions. The atmosphere is friendly and relaxed, but there is also an element of politeness and formality that we are not used to. Another story, another cellphone call from which we only recognize “A very happy Diwali to you.” The dish of sweets is passed around again, another story, some silence, then suddenly the visitors are up and away, a little time of quiet, then the house bell rings again. Other neighbours-friends-family have arrived. Outside, beyond the familiarities and intimacy of this room, the Delhi night continues to explode, flash, reverberate.
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