It is 14 years since I moved to Mumbai and this will be my 13th Diwali here.
The first few Diwalis were spent in Chembur, essentially the domain of South Indians, especially the Tamils.
And that meant I could continue to follow the Tamil customs and traditions even in distant Mumbai, thus making my great grandmother in heaven very proud.
Thus passed a few years, and some uneventful Diwalis. But it was only five years back when I moved into an essentially Gujarati locality that I came face to face with an entirely different way of celebrating Diwali.... and it would be an understatement to say the frugal Tamil in me was more than shocked!!!!
To tell you why, you must first understand how we Tamils traditionally celebrate Diwali.
Actually, to even say we 'celebrate' the festival is bit of a stretch.
Unlike in the north, Diwali for Tamils is a one-day affair. Ok, granted, it is a one helluva long day that starts at 3.30 am....(this annoying habit of waking up at insane hours of the morning is something that I strongly hold against my community.)
But if you are someone like me, who would rather link her Aadhar card to the bank account cheerfully than wake up early, then the harsh truth is, you have little choice. For, there is this whole community out there that takes upon itself the onerous responsibility of waking up the entire neighbourhood, which it does by firing a thousand-walah firecracker at the unholy hour. While every dog on the road thinks that the apocalypse has arrived, soporiphic denizens like me wake up from our beds quivering like Trump did when Kim Jong Un fired his missiles over Japan!!
Suffice to say our celebration of Naraka Chaturdashi starts with a bang!
After being woken up at the wickedest of the wee hours, slyly nicknamed, Brahma muhurtham, we are herded off to have the mandated oil bath.
As a wise man (in a movie) once pointed out, the oil bath bears a morbid resemblance to the bath ritual mandated for a shraddha. 'Are we actually mourning the death of narakasura in the guise of celebrating it', the wise man asked?! Something to be mulled over....yes!
In any case, not a happy thought - this abhyanga snan - for the people on the east coast, because Diwali often coincides with the north-east monsoons that brings rains in its most violent form - the cyclonic storms. Certainly, not the fairest of weathers for the firecracker enthusiast!
Sadly, even after we endure the early morn bath ritual on probably the wettest day of the year, our ordeal is far from over.
Instead of being treated to all the goodies that wait to be devoured, we are treated to a bitter-sweet dose of 'deepavali marundu' or medicine!!! Can you imagine a more cruel tradition where you kick-start a festival by consuming a medicine?!!!
The 'deepavali marundu' is a brownish-black gooey substance that is made up of a variety of herbs and spices such as jeera and ginger cooked by melting gud. It is believed(?!) that the medicine is consumed to pre-empt any gastronomical disturbances that may be caused by the untimely bath and the much promised feast that follows. Whatever be the explanation, to many, the idea is weird, and the dish, unpalatable!!
Although the much promised feast does happen, the size of the celebrations comes nowhere close to the festivities that one sees up north. In short, the ornate gagra cholis and dry fruit burfies beat the grandest of kanjeevarams and the humble mysore-pak hands down!!
So you can imagine why my jaw scraped the floor when I was exposed to the Gujarathi style, four-day-long, stupendous Diwali, where, to start with, no expense is spared to give the house, and its members a new look. The festival is celebrated with sheer, unadulterated and unabashed abandon, and on a scale unfathomable for a traditionally groomed Tamil....And, the festivities only keep getting bigger every year, what with the 'great indian festival' and 'unbox zindagi' adding to the dham, dhama, dham, dham!!
But there is one area where we Tamils undercut the Gujaratis - and that is in how we refer to the festival by its actual longish name - Deepavali.
Deepavali = deepa + avali- meaning a series of lamps. But the funny part is the Tamils dont light lamps for Deepavali. Instead, they choose to do so in the month of 'karthik' in a manner of paying obeisance to their favourite god Muruga aka Karthikeya. Yet another case of' being same, same but different'!
Deepavali, according to one school of thought, was not part of the ancient Tamil culture at all, till the Jains brought it along when they migrated from the North. (For the Jains, Deepavali is the day Mahavira attained Nirvana.) And the Jains were a dominant political and religious force in ancient Tamilagam even during the Sangam era. So it is quite possible that their customs were assimilated into the local culture. With time, the gods changed, but popular traditions apparently didn't.
Pan-religious it may be, but Diwali is not a pan-Indian festival as it is often made out to be. Large populations in the country, including the Keralites, Bengalis and people from the north-east don't bother to celebrate it.
And that is what makes Diwali aka Deepavali a fascinating festival - the innumerable ways we choose to celebrate it, or don't!!
