A very happy Deepavali (Diwali) to everyone here! Deepavali is the festival of lights and is the biggest festival for the Hindus in India and elsewhere. It is the one festival that *everyone (the celebrations transcend religious diversities) is counting down to and it is a time of much gaiety and revelry. Every house is lit up with either small oil lamps or the electric ones and the noise and smell of fireworks fills the air. Am posting a link below which has more information.......

http://www.indiaexpress.com/rangoli/deepavali.html

Well, as an NRI of sorts, - right back at ya!

It sounds wonderful, maahey! A happy one to you, too. I wonder if Anu is in India, now?
Is this something that natives of India do even when they don't live there any more? If so, does it feel a bit...lessened, somehow?

Yes, Jackie, all of us will celebrate Diwali wherever we are in some which way. But, you are right, it is TREMENDOUSLY lessened. Of course, if the local Indian community is organising the celebrations, it brings everyone together and helps ameliorate the feeling somewhat.

But, IMHO, the mood of the festival simply cannot be transplanted. Deepavali must be celebrated in India for the *whole experience. The streets, the neighbourhoods, the homes all come alive; there are lights and paper laterns everywhere. And there are intra and inter neighbourhood firework competitions - to see who creates the maximum noise and who begins earliest in the morning (4 AM is LATE)! They start at dawn, take a breather at around daybreak and the day is spent in relative quiet (with the sporadic but continual sounds of cracker blasts) almost as if everyone is biding their time. Come twilight, the cities and their people come alive and the accompanying noise is deafening to say the least. It goes on like that till the wee hours of the morning, only to continue in the same fashion the next day. For three whole days, is Diwali, but the middle day is the most important.
And to go with all of this, there is a special food festival with a menu full of dishes all specially made for Diwali, with cuisines from all the different states and ethnicities contributing!!
Thanks for the wishes!

Thank you! i was going to post here ask what Diwali was--my co-op newsletter (really a letter, 2 sides of a single sheet of business sized paper) is wishing every one
Happy Diwali
Happy New Year (jewish new year)
Happy Halloween (irish/pagan festival, co-op by christianity)

(did i mention my co-op/neighborhood was serious ethnicaly mixed?!)

What's the difference between Deepavali and Diwali? Are they different dialects? And yes, maahey, happy Festival of Lights!

Thanks everyone!
AnnaS, there is no difference between the two. The former is more formal; the latter which has condensed the pa and the va into a wa, is more commonly used.

Diwali! I'd forgotten about Diwali. We used to celebrate that in primary school, one of the major bonuses of growing up in an ethically diverse area is that you have a festival about once a week. Some of the teachers made candle-hot-air-balloons, and my friends mum made tiny laughing jack-o-lanterns that smelled good and sat in a row on their windowsill. I liked that festival. Happy Diwali.

Maahey, Jackie and all others

While I celebrated Diwali with gusto (read lots of fircrackers for gusto) when I was in India, I have to say I haven't paid it much attention in London. This year, however, a member of staff of mine, who comes from Punjab, invited me to his house for a Diwali lunch (today in fact). In between the shifts of our working day, of course. So for the first time in some years, I had a well-cooked (home-cooked) Indian feast for lunch, along with the obligatory sweets (and had a Whisky thrust on me - I suppose alos obligatory if your the 'boss' and visiting one of your employees' homes in India). And right now the night sky over the Thames is being peppered with a variety of fireworks, not competition for the really big ones on Guy Fawkes night, but a lovely accompaniment to the end of our shift anyway.

So a happy Diwali (or Deepavali, if you prefer the Sanskrit original) to all. Rama and Sita have returned from exile and Ayodhya is rejoicing.

cheer

the sunshine warrior

'ethically diverse'? No wonder people think Manchester is unsafe.

Sorry, dody. Don't mean to pick on typos (a vile habit usually), but this one seemed so felicitous it was irresistible. Feel free to return the compliment any time I slip up.

cheer

the sunshine "I always preferred Holi to Diwali" warrior

*now he wonders what ethical diversions dody grew up with*

HAPPY DIWALI Maahey!!!

shanks, did you notice what Anu put in the WAD for the 27th?
"In November, I'll be speaking at Mumbai (formerly Bombay)"

Jackie

No, I didn't notice that, and yes, it is a can of worms - you know my feelings about the re(actionary)naming of Bombay.

the sunshine "down with Bal Thackeray" warrior

> you know my feelings about the re(actionary)naming of Bombay.

Yes, but what I want to to know is, why isn't the film industry there now called Mollywood?

Perhaps because the film industry, over there, was never called Bollywood. It is only here, with our Brit Empire superiority, that we gave it that label. Most Indians have never heard of it, so why should they care? (It's possible that many, though perhaps not most, Indians haven't even heard that three of India's big four cities are now called Kolkotha, Chennai and Mumbai!)

cheer

the sunshine warrior

>Chennai.

While never having been there, I have very fond memories of Chennai. On a flight from Auckland to Singapore, I was sitting near a family that turned out to be returning home to Chennai. The son (about 13) that I was talking to said, "we're from Chennai", then proceeded to say "Madras" when he saw the vacant stare that is my standard expression. They did more than educate me though, they shared some exquisite homemade dal and parathas with me, so Chennai's fine by me. Of course,a nice Madras curry would have really made my day, but.