Deepawali 2025

Deepawali has always been the biggest festival my family and I have celebrated growing up. Traditionally,

1. We would wake up early in the morning to get oiled rubbed into us, and then we’d have to sit around trying not to get it everywhere. If I was in Sringeri for Deepawali, all the children would be oiled, then made to stand in a row at the bottom of the bathroom for Ammama to fling scalding water at us straight from the handi. In my mother’s house, things were a little calmer - though the water still had to be very hot to get the oil off.
2. Then we’d breakfast. There would be 5 types of poha (why? There just were). Daat phow, mirasangi phow, kalayl phow, Dheya phow, and god phow. That’s thick poha, chilli poha, mixed-with-hand poha, curd poha, and a jaggery one to cap it off for you heathens.
3. After that it gets a little fuzzy. When does the Pooja happen? Unclear, I didn’t care too much and our poojas growing up were small anyway.
4. In Dubai, after breakfast we’d all get dressed up and give our neighbours little sweet boxes made with things that my mum and her friends made by hand! I loved all the attention I got for my dresses back then. When I moved into the apartment I live in now, 4 years ago, I did this too. My neighbours were very surprised, and didn’t seem to particularly welcome it. Cultural fossilisation in NRI families strikes again!
5. There would be a giant lunch with many courses. The dishes wouldn’t be “special” though, just lots and healthy. The joy of the lunch would be all of us sitting down to eat together, something we rarely did as a family.
6. There would be some kind of lights in the evening. No firecrackers at all, but always diyas and maybe another pooja/bhajan thing, more new clothes.

I’m not religious, but festivals aren’t really about religion. I deeply believe in the need for people to have rituals around which they organise themselves and their loved ones together. I have family, and I also have chosen family.

I want to focus on what rituals can mean for chosen family. Shru has always done Christmas, Akila has always done new years. We all use our birthdays as an excuse to bring people together. There are other yearly things - an annual event some friends do for fun, there’s pride and the festivities that surround it. We all show up to BQFF and Maya Bazaar. I started this post writing about wanting to create new rituals - and I still do! - but I realised that I have built so many for myself already. Now I just need to make them contagious, so that the friends I have in other cities will fly down for them some time :) I do Lohri in Jan with and for Dee, and then Lolla in Bombay for the magic of festivals, and to honor joy in someone I love. I do Tuesday dinners for ranting and just to show up with friends. There is a book club. If you are reading this and you know I love you (and you should!) then please, know that you are invited to all of this and more.

Deepawali is already pretty overloaded for most people with natal family obligations, but I hope that there is some space for it every year to do a shindig at mine.

This year, I hosted lunch on Sunday, I didn’t really have a plan. But people showed up and we cooked. I put flowers in my house, lit candles, and felt loved.

Then on Monday, I went home with trepidation but was pleasantly surprised. Things didn’t change too much - my father and brother continued to do their own thing. But I didn’t pressure myself to look good or cook, I just showed up. I am tired of being the good daughter, so I just sat with her while she did things, chattered a little bit, and brought out some carrom and Hanabi. When it was time to leave, there were fireworks on the street, so when mu asked me to stay until they passed I was so relaxed I actually agreed - on the condition that I could just do my own thing instead of interacting with anyone. I think it really helped that we were hosting a fifth person, a young cousin of mine convalescing from Dengue. He hung out with mum and brother playing yet another game of Hanabi while I sat in my corner playing video games.

I can’t remember the last time I felt this relaxed and restored in my parents’ house. I let go of expectations of myself, and my parents let go of expectations of me too. Most importantly, I was able to just exist, doing my own thing. When I went back home I realised I’d actually enjoyed myself, in a quiet way - and I was looking forward to visiting my parents again soon.