VaxTrac Blog

Friday was Diwali—the Indian festival of lights and roughly equivalent to Christmas in the US in terms of importance—and Shawn and I had the luxury and privilege of celebrating with local families. In fact, many local families. Seemingly everyone you pass invites you in to share in the pooja (prayer) and then partake in copious amounts of food. Since Diwali is not well known or oft celebrated in our community, I thought I would put together a quick guide so that everyone in the US can expand their cultural horizons and celebrate as well. By the time I post this, the actual day will have passed, but you can start planning for next year.

Step 1: Take off work
This is a critical step, unless of course you’re in the 80% of the population around here that does not work in the service sector. For a holiday, there sure are a lot of people working.  As it’s also a huge shopping day, most merchants and market vendors were available and performed a pooja at their place of business before going to be with their families. We wanted to respect the local traditions so naturally, we took off work. Americans will need to ask their boss for at least one day off (and a second day for recovery is advised). If your boss refuses, claim religious persecution. That usually does the trick.

We spent the day sightseeing around the town and trying out some street food. In the ongoing battle between Indian street food and my digestive system, the digestive system is surprisingly undefeated. But I think the food has yet to bring its “A” game. Now that I’ve learned the hard way, you should probably spend the bulk of your day off fasting. You’ll thank me later.

Step 2: Eat some sweets
Listen, I like desserts and sweet foods as much as the next person, but to say that Diwali is an overload in this area is a gross understatement. Indians love their sweets (sweets being the term they use to cover general desserts, most of which are small, petit four-sized confectionary pieces). They give sweets as Diwali presents to friends and family, often in lieu of goods. I like that, as opposed to Christmas in the US, the commercialism has remained largely absent from the holiday; and many of the presents exchanged are edible. It’s really hard to give someone a gift they don’t like.

The difference between the sweets here and the desserts I’m used to in the US is the amount of sugar. For a country that has a serious problem with obesity and diabetes, American has  nothing on India when it comes to the amount of sugar we put in the desserts. There were at least three or four completely different items last night that, to the best of my knowledge, were comprised of ONLY sugar. How they took just sugar and formed a bunch of different items is beyond me. Their sweetologists are more material scientists (nay, mad scientists) than confectioners.

And you will be offered endless trays of sweets at every house. In this culture, feeding a guest is an important duty. You can haggle as to how many of them you have to eat without offending the family, but the minimum number is roughly one of each; that turns out to be five or six pieces which is the size of an above average dessert. If this happened once throughout the evening, it would have been a sufficient amount of sweets for a week. But alas, our hosts had many friends and we were loathe to refuse.

Step 3: Buy some fireworks
This part definitely got my red, white and blue blood flowing. If there is one thing I can bring to a party, it’s my love of fireworks. And Indian fireworks with unholy amounts of gunpowder invoke in me a deeper appreciation of the joy that blowing stuff up can bring.

If you want a rough idea of what to expect, go to your neighborhood fireworks stand next holiday season and buy three or four good size pieces, such as mortars. Take them all apart. Then, with your eyes closed, combine the constituents of all of those into one giant piece. The rockets burn so bright that they leave an after-image on your retina. The firecrackers are just a shade less loud than a jet engine.

Once families finish their poojas and dinner, it’s time to start doing some damage to everyone’s hearing. The prevalence of fireworks here is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We did our part as well. Turns out that $35 of Indian fireworks can make for a helluva time. After every launch, you try to balance actually watching the end result with scrambling to avoid the falling magnesium that’s still on fire. We are proud to report that our unit suffered zero casualties and only minor injuries. Considering we saw the result of our pyromania land on neighboring houses and in dry trees, we really can’t speak to the collateral damage we likely caused.

Recommended: Actually learn what the holiday is about
I have now attended several religious events so I have a vague idea of what’s going on. Typically, families present token gifts to several of the gods, in forms of food and money. Then everyone prays together in a singing voice. The tune is catch and sticks in your head. This is all done gathered around what I would describe as a shrine; and these shrines can range from the simple to the impressively ornate. The ceremonies themselves don’t last more than 15 minutes, or about a third of the time that you might spend bargaining with your host to agree on the amount of sweets you will consume.

I enjoyed the entire event immensely. It reminded me of a New Year’s Eve progressive dinner party, with less alcohol (none, if you can believe that). I am incredibly grateful to the many families that included me in their personal celebrations. And I apologize to the many families I offended by not eating more. I think by the time I leave I will have offended just about every family in the town. It took me about 9 hours to sleep off the food hangover but a sugar crash makes for some sound sleeping. Now that I feel I can successfully navigate the waters of Diwali, I will certainly try to make it back next year.