Diwali with the Family

Last Friday and Saturday were finally Diwali! Our hotel, like most of the other buildings in the area, was decked out for the occasion. There were garlands around the door and little lamps hung various places. Dattaji, one of the hotel-workers, also made a lovely sand picture for the lobby, as shown above.

On a typical day, people here are just as likely to wear jeans and t-shirts as they are to wear the more traditional Indian garb, especially if they're under thirty or so. During Diwali, almost everyone in Pune wore more traditional and formal Indian clothing. This included our professors, shown below.



On Friday, the hotel staff celebrated with us by giving us gifts since, for the last two months, they've been like our family. The girls were each given a sort of large toiletry case/small bag with the hotel logo, and the guys were each given a wallet. In return, we pooled together some money and bought a few lamps and a box of chocolates for the hotel stall. The large red-and-white lamp shown hanging outside the hotel below was one of our gifts.



The hotel also brought us some typical Maharashtrian snacks for the occasion that day. They came as a group to our rooms and wished us a happy Diwali while doing this, which was very cute. The thing that's cut into four flat squares is called chikki, and is similar to peanut brittle, but larger, thicker, and made with different varieties of nuts. I'm not sure how to name or describe the other thing. I don't actually like either of these, but I was charmed that they were given to us.



The hotel staff also lit sparklers and firecrackers with us, as in this particularly safe-looking moment below.



It seems worth mentioning here that the guys who work in the hotel are very kindly attentive to all of us in the study abroad group. For instance, I noticed that, after the first week, they had picked up on what everyone likes to eat for breakfast, what room everyone is in, who is roommates with whom, etc. When someone gets sick, the hotel staff seems to discover it. Then, the person who is sick will have each of the people who works in the hotel stopping in the hall to express their well-wishes.

I made a joke about how much the people who work in the hotel must be annoyed by us at one point and Arnab, the program coordinator, said quite seriously, "Oh no, they love you guys. They tell me that all the time." Truly, I cannot figure out the reason for this. It seems to me that the study abroad group would be pretty poor hotel guests. Many of the people in the group are pretty tame, but many of them are also noticably louder and messier than the usual hotel guests. It's probably inevitable that if you put a bunch of college students in a country with cheap cigarettes and no drinking age, give them someone to clean their room, and give them more free time than usual so that they can see the area, some people are not going to be very responsible. I would have imagined that sort of poor behavior from a few people reflects badly upon us all, but I guess not. I really don't know what the hotel staff likes about us. Maybe it's the way that you inevitably start to like people who you get to know from being in frequent contact with, or possibly it's some form of Stockholm syndrome.

Preparing for Diwali

Last weekend was Diwali, popularly known as the "Festival of Lights" in America. The word "Diwali" literally means "a row of lanterns." Everyone buys at least a few lanterns to hang outside, along with garlands, festoons and, typically, Christmas lights. The Christmas lights do make sense in terms of the general concept of creating a row of lights for Diwali. As a foreigner from the northern United States, though, I can't help but find it a bit funny to see Christmas lights hanging on Indian buildings in eighty-degree weather. Their removal from the usual context makes the effect a bit surreal.

For about two weeks before the holiday, the street was lined with the booths shown above. These booths sell puja goods (such as incense, flowers, and colored powders), a variety of fireworks, decorations, clay votive-candle holders, and intricate paper lanterns. These lanterns are often being made constructed before your eyes by the people who sit outside and tend the booths. They also sell a variety of colored sands and seives that are used to make intricate sand drawings on the ground as Diwali draws closer. It was very neat to see all of this, but you can't hang around gawking for too long, because it gets very crowded, and people here aren't shy about pushing each other a little.

Like Christmas, Diwali is the biggest gift-giving holiday of the year. It is the time at which women traditionally order a new wardrobe for the upcoming year. Traditionally, the holiday celebrates the return of Ram, the hero of the epic the Ramayana, to his kingdom, Ayodhya, after rescuing his abducted wife. (Like most epics, this isn't a story that lends itself well to summary, so I won't attempt that here.) Diwali also is the New Year, according to the traditional Indian fiscal calender.

Like Christmas, this is also the holiday for which people who are living away from their parents or immediate families will most likely come home. Something I found funny was how similar the Coca-Cola Diwali ads resemble the Coca-Cola Christmas ads. Here is a link to one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecGXsn3ejR8

Also, in terms of how people deck out their delivery trucks in India, the truck in this commercial is perhaps not the most improbable thing I have seen.