My DIY Diwali

Diwali is such an easy holiday to celebrate these days. One rangoli (solid cut-out, ready to assemble), a few dozen diyas (store bought), cards (from a store), a stack of gift boxes ordered from confectionery shops, and I’m ready for the festival. Back in the retail-challenged past, Diwali was mostly a do-it-yourself affair that kept us busy for weeks.

Houses got cleaned. Special foods got cooked. Metres of silk had to be shopped and dropped off to be stitched by the tailor, followed by days of begging and threatening so that new outfits could be picked up just before the festival. Platters of goodies draped over with a festive cloth had to be hand-delivered to the homes of friends and neighbors. People dropped by with their platters of goodies and sat and chatted over cups of tea. My sister, brother and I made Diwali cards, laboriously drawing diyas and paisleys and writing a personalized greeting from our family -- none of those e-cards and smses sent off with the click of a digit. We did all this even though we just got one day off from school for Diwali.

The annual cleaning did not just mean uncluttering the house. Cupboards and drawers were turned out and stacked neatly. Cobwebs that had been tolerated with a frown for months were finally demolished. Every corner of the apartment: the walls, the floors, and every door and window, were washed with soapy water and scrubbed.

During this annual ritual, a brown river crowned with suds would trickle down the stairs of our building. That was one of the tests of good neighborliness. Some families had their runaway tributaries mopped up. The bad neighbors just pushed their dirty water out.

At the risk of sounding ancient, I will share that in those days aluminium ladders weren’t available. Paranoid about the makeshift stools most households used, my father had a carpenter build a tall, topple-free four-legged stool with a platform wide enough for a bucket and a pair of legs to stand on. It was a great stool. Neighbors asked to borrow it for their house cleanings, and sent it back with a platter of homemade sweets.

The ultra-clean floor had another use. My siblings and I loved walnuts but the betelnut cracker at home would not open wide enough for a walnut. We designated the corner of our living room door-jamb our nutcracker. We’d wipe out the corner, stick a whole walnut in and close the door till we heard a crunch. We’d take the broken fragments and separate out the kernels.

Once the house was cleaned, the Diwali goodies were prepared. Each day, one or two items would be made. My nose got a smell telegram as soon as I got off the rickshaw with my schoolbag and entered our building. Sev. Murkha. Gaja. Nimki. Fafda. Or if it was that cloying smell of simmering ghee and sugar, I knew it would be Ghughra, Mohanthal, Adadiya. Our little kitchen became a sanctuary for deep-frying as kilos of hydrogenated fat and tins of ghee and oil were emptied.

Sometimes my aunts were all clustered outside the kitchen, sitting under the fan even though it did nothing to prevent the sweat circles around their armpits from getting bigger. They rolled scores of rounds of dough, chatting and moving their elbows in brisk little jerks. We helped a little and tasted a lot. But when sweets were made, a smiling Brahmin cook called Devji Maharaj took over the kitchen for a few afternoons.

Devji Maharaj was brown and round as a gulab jamun. He had large tufts of white ear, thick as a shaving brush, and the hairiest, bulging forearms that would smack, twist and flatten kilos of dough. He brought his own industrial size pots and woks, and utensils with handles as long as fishing rods. He was no wimp who needed to be near a churning fan. He leaned over the kitchen fires, deep-frying and stirring and kneading for hours until the vapors rising from the pots made him look wavy like a genie in a mirage.

The tins of sweets and savories would be depleted over the next week. Most were sent off in platters to the homes of friends and relatives. The snacks we reached for over-eagerly lost their novelty in a few days. We groaned every time mother set them out on a plate or packed them for school snack. The festival started early and lingered in our blood streams. Years later, when I suffered my first hangover, I recognized a hint of that feeling of absolute overload.

My mother's DIY Diwalis have imprinted smells and memories that haven't faded. I won’t be scrubbing any walls, but I have cooked some snacks and sweets whose smells prompt little hands to go on clandestine missions to the kitchen. My family will do our own little Lakshmi puja and hand-deliver chocolate boxes to our friends' homes. We'll arrange diyas on our porch and light our modest stash of fireworks. Then we'll shut all the windows, cuddle up and watch the skies explode with the muffled pop of all the fireworks in our neighborhood.