Diwali

After two frantic weeks of work and hectic weekends in between, I finally have some time today. My wife makes these elaborate food hampers every festive season and gifts them out. I think it exhausts her, and yet she loves doing it, because it makes her feel valued whenever people say something nice about her. She was so proud telling me that one of her acquaintances gave her back an amazing food hamper in return. My wife told her, “You shouldn’t have,” and the woman replied that this wasn’t just for Diwali, it was to celebrate who she is as a person. Such a lovely thing to say. The shine in my wife’s eyes as she told me that made me realize how constantly underappreciated she must feel. Whatever she hasn’t been able to find at home, she’s found a way to get outside it. In some ways, not so different from me. Just that our dopamine needs different things. So, moral dilemma aside, we’re really the same underneath. A gross oversimplification of the situation, sure, but there’s some overlap worth noticing. She’s deeply motivated by what people will say about her, by the recognition she gets. I think we just don’t tell each other, inside our own family, how amazing we actually are, and that gap is exactly what sends all of us looking for that validation elsewhere. Part of me wonders if chasing validation is even worth it. I think, to some extent, it has to be, otherwise we’d just be sociopaths.

Anyway, that’s not really what this post was about. I wanted to sit with some of the strongest memories tied to this festival. Of every Diwali I’ve celebrated, two stand out distinctly.

The one feeling hurt

I had just moved in with my aunt. This was my first Diwali with them. My uncle had bought a ton of crackers, and all the kids and adults gathered on the road in front of the house to burst them. One of them was a rocket that released a parachute on bursting, with a solid human figure tied underneath that floated down slowly. I was completely fascinated by it. Every time someone set one off, I’d scan the sky, hunting for the parachute coming down so I could catch it. It irritated my uncle enough that he finally snapped and said, “A yokel will always remain a yokel, no matter what.” Somehow, that line pierced right through me. I was maybe 13, still figuring out who I even was. After that, I just sat in the corner and watched. I lost interest and Diwali was over for me that year. I couldn’t care less about the rest of it. And soon after, I told my mom I wanted to go back home every single year for Diwali.

The one feeling alone

This was the first Diwali after my sister got married. Every year before that, the ritual was the same: I’d go back to my hometown, we’d wait for the Pooja to finish, go greet relatives, and my mom would force me to eat dinner before I could get to the crackers. By then I’d usually have amassed multiple paint buckets full of them. Once my sister and I had changed, we’d head up to the terrace and start bursting crackers, sometimes joined by cousins drifting in and out. On the terrace, my sister, even though older than me, only burst a handful, while I was the one setting off most of them. The year she got married, she came and spent a few hours with all of us before heading back to her in-laws, to celebrate her first Diwali with them instead. I ate dinner and went up to the terrace alone. I burst a few crackers, then realized pretty quickly that none of it felt right without her, and after about fifteen minutes I brought the rest of them back downstairs and called it a night. That turned out to be the last Diwali I ever burst crackers on. After that, I just lost interest in it entirely. I’d still go join people, but I’d only watch and sit. I never lit anything again. I’d tell people it was wasteful, too much smoke, but I think, in some way, it was really just my way of bookmarking a feeling and keeping it safe from whatever life would later do to it, the particular way siblings end up missing each other. This year, maybe 26 years later, is the first time I actually asked my kids if we could burst a few crackers together. We spent some money buying them today, and maybe we’ll revisit the ritual again tomorrow.

Apart from these two, there are very few Diwalis I actually remember. A handful spent in the college hostel, just listening to music, maybe a temple visit if my mother insisted, then retiring early or watching a movie instead.

All through today, as I kept running from one thing to the next, these two Diwalis kept surfacing in my mind. Not sure why. Maybe it’s time to redefine the tradition and try something different. Maybe.