Diwali is the festival of lights, and all across India, Hindu families decorate their homes with lit candles and what we might call “Christmas lights.” The lit candles, of course, are safely set out along footpaths and stone walkways.
It is a pretty holiday, with friends and family paying each other visits and delivering gifts of Indian mithai (sweets).
It is also a holiday of pyromania. I don’t care what kind of illegal fireworks you bought in Chinatown last year — you haven’t seen anything like this.
The entire city literally sounds like a warzone. Or at least, what I assume to be a warzone, based my excessive viewing of Anderson Cooper specials on CNN.
It sounds like bombs are going off everywhere. And every pataka (“puh-TAH-kah” / firecracker) is basically like a form of unspent military munition. The fountains climb fifteen to twenty feet into the air. The sparklers burn so hot that even candles aren’t hot enough to light them. And the sticks of gunpowder are tiny bombs that reverberate across the neighborhoods.
My friend Shivani pays me a visit during the day. We haven’t seen each other in many months, and the beginning of my Indian adventures happens to coincide with the end of hers. We participate in a Hindu pooja before leaving my cousin Jyoti didi’s home to wander around an upscale shopping center.
After spending a few hours catching up in my cousin’s New Delhi neighborhood, we duck out of the posh surroundings. I’m supposed to be accompanying Shivani back to the home where she and several other visiting do-gooders from the West are living. It is in another wealthy neighborhood in New Delhi. But instead, we indulge our talkative autorickshaw driver Mohammad.
He drives us a ways across the city to Paharganj, an area of winding, narrow streets and shops. Bombs, I mean firecrackers, are going off everywhere.
As we stumble through the streets, Indian boys and young men continue their detonations. We pass a small lively restaurant whose patrons are all white. Shivani and I both guess that the restaurant is a Lonely Planet recommendation. And as we flip open our book, we prove ourselves right.
We order off the menu because we think we are badass. As a steady stream of Indians walk by, European tourists tear through their thalis of food. Bombs continue to go off all around us.
Finally, I get Shivani home and head back to my cousin Jyoti Didi’s house. I’m sad that my first visit with Shivani in quite some time is also probably my last for quite some time. Back at my cousin’s home, extended family have gathered for an extended feast. The food will come later, but the early courses all consist of fireworks and flame.
The grand finale? Something called “Ten Thousand.” My jijaji (JEE-jah-jee / cousin’s husband) begins unrolling a long track of thousands and thousands of tiny tubes of gunpowder. The track must be at least 20 feet long, and it runs down the street.
The match is struck, and the fuse is lit. Slowly but surely, a bright blaze of gunpowder and flying paper works its way down the street. I start daydreaming and am interrupted when a projectile hits me in the shoulder.
We eat dinner after midnight. Lakshmi, the family servant, cooks up pooris and sabji. I’m not sure if the late dinner is a New Delhi tradition, a family tradition, a Hindu tradition, or none of the above. But I eat. And then I sleep.
