Happy Diwali!

So I finally celebrated my first Diwali in Ahmedabad in 10 years! It was quite the experience. The night before Diwali I spent at Komal’s house where her mom was busy making Diwali snacks till literally 2 in the morning. We three were seating in the kitchen, she was cooking and Komal was helping her as well as putting mehndi on my hands. After that, Komal and I were up til 4 am, talking away about things you don’t need to know ;). Nonetheless, the next morning I was up by 9 am and reached at my uncle’s place where we got ready and then went over to my aunt’s house. There we ate and ate and ate pani puri and stuffed myself to the brim. Once I got home, I needed to do some packing and then at 4 pm, I went out with Mervyn (one of my supervisors in Keshod, he was also in Ahmedabad celebrating Diwali with his family). So then another round of food eating starting, and holy jeebus, 2 cups of ice cream, vada pau (this potato sandwich thing) and a very tall soda type drink in Barista. It was fun, we had a good chat and got to roam around a few streets of Ahmedabad that I had never been on before and a few places that I have had interesting experiences at. Nonetheless, upon my return, got changed for the third or fourth time in the day, had dinner again!, and sat for the Diwali pooja prayer and then went over to another uncle-aunt’s house where we all lit some firecrackers. We didn’t blow any bombs, but we played with rockets, anar, chakri and fulljari. Once again, for those not familiar with these words, these are basically pretty looking firecrackers, just google it you might get a sample of what it is. OHHH, and I forgot to mention, but during diwalis, we light up the entire house with light. We use diyas- little clay pots, put oil in them and then soak a cotton strand in the oil and light that. It looks beautiful. Along with the diyas, my cousin and I made rangoli. Rangoli is basically any design made out of power colours and you create these during Diwali to decorate your house. They can be made on the floor. The pic attached shows what Rohan and I created together. This was the first time for both of us and it was fun! We were pretty slow at it, took us about 2 hours to make this, but still it was worthwhile. Btw, I wish I could say that the design was a creation of our imaginations, but no, it’s actually made with the help of a stencil. But we still filled in the colour ourselves!!
After the fireworks, we drove around the city a bit and went for some roadside coffee. The entire city is lit up during this time, people want to have fun. What’s really amazing though is the fireworks. I didn’t know whether to be in awe of them or be scared of them. Well, I was both. Awe because there is such a large variety and there are fireworks going on across the entire city and the sky is literally lit up any direction you see. Scared because some people are ridiculously stupid in how they want to enjoy the fireworks. Many people would light up little mini bombs in the middle of the street where cars, cows, and two-wheelers (bikes/scooters) are going by. Many times people light a bomb in their hand and just chuck it. Other times, people go in the middle of the road and set up an entire box load of those big fireworks (like the ones we see during the firework festival in August) and just set them off. In a few buildings across from us, we could see that a group of people were standing on the terrace, lighting hand rockets and just chucking them downwards towards the road, towards moving vehicles and people. Forget being on a two-wheeler, even driving in a car is adsljfasldjfldsjfsdfds. You better be a skilled driver and know your fireworks to be able to tell when something is lit or not, be ready to swerve your car at the last moment, just really really tricky. Anyway, my night ended at 1.30 am with the balcony door open and the sounds and lights of fireworks enveloping my room. I woke up really early the next morning, around 6.00 am, again to the sounds and lights of fireworks because it is new years day. On new years day, people actually started to light the fireworks at 4 am. So imagine you are sleeping and waking to the sounds and lights of fireworks in the style of the August fireworks in Vancouver. Except, instead of one small boat lighting up some firecrackers for 2 hours, imagine, thousands and thousands of people lighting up the entire city sky for an entire night (and many nights before it too) with different styles of fireworks. Hadn’t experienced that in a while, but glad I did now. In any case, happy belated Diwali and hope yours went well if you celebrate it and in case you don’t hope you had a good Oct 28.
Love

PS: LInk to my pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/sharma.richa41/DropBox?authkey=hgBCTUY0u6Y#5262634714816582018

let me know if you can't open it ok?

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