Diwali

As I have mentioned the fall season in Varanasi is a wealth of festivities and special occasions. Two weekends ago it was Diwali, which had the feel of Christmas or New Year about it. Everyone we met wished us Happy Diwali, and just like at Christmas there was the commercialization of Diwali – although not nearly so extreme and not three months ahead of time – with all sorts of discounts, special offers, and advertising recalling the celebration.

At Kiran an afternoon was spent getting the school grounds ready for the festivity; to start with everyone was busy cleaning, including the teaching staff; then beautiful rangolis (decorative folk art similar to mandalas) were designed first on paper, then sketched on the ground with chalk, and finally the colors were added with flower petals and plant stems that had been cut very finely. Small candles and diyas (small clay oil lamps) were lit everywhere, so that by the time night fell a beautifully peaceful atmosphere had been created. Everyone walked around admiring the various rangolis, and since Petra was out with the camera, all the children wanted their pictures taken.

Earlier that day before beginning with the work at school, I decided to give our little guesthouse a good sweeping as well. Although the floor space isn’t much it takes quite some time given the means available for the job (check out the photo of our Indian broom – perfectly biodegradable, but completely impractical). Anyway, I got the job done and the place looked clean and smelled of pine needles and incense.

When I was done, I decided to pick up my “bible” on Varanasi, Diana Eck’s Banaras City of Light , to find out what this Diwali is all about. As usual these Hindu feast days are never so straight forward as the Christian holidays – it seems that once a day of remembrance has been created everyone wants in on the fun, so many different traditions commemorate different mythological events.

First and foremost Diwali celebrates the return of Lord Rama to Ayodhya after his fourteen-year-long exile and his victory over the demon-king Ravana. In the ancient Indian epic, Ramayana,  the people of Ayodhya did what all the Indians were doing –  they illuminated the kingdom with earthen diyas and burst firecrackers.

However, it turns out that everyone was cleaning homes, classrooms and offices for another very good reason: to welcome Lakshmi, the Goddess of Fortune and Prosperity. Everyone is called to clean and decorate their houses with care so that she shall desire to dwell in their homes, and thus bring wealth to the family. Later on in the city we would see people busily white washing their homes, hanging out their laundry, stringing up electric lights, and decorating their storefronts all in the name of welcoming the Goddess Lakshmi.

Finally, that evening, while we were out marveling at the rangolis whose delicate beauty would last only one night, Petra and I got called into the administration office, and for the first time since we had arrived we were given our “pay” – it’s just the pocket money that volunteers are given, but nevertheless it seems that Lakshmi was quite impressed with my sweeping!

Two weeks after Diwali on 21 November, with the moon in its fullest and most auspicious form, there was the follow-up called Deepawali or what is also known as the Festival of Lights. It marks the moment when Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, achieved Enlightenment and was thus delivered from the cycle of death and rebirth. And Varanasi really is an extraordinary place to be on the night of Deepawali.

There was an air of excitement that started already at 4 a.m., when an endless flow of pilgrims began to arrive at the Ganges for the predawn prayers and ritual bathing. I could hear the commotion from our hotel room and decided to get up at about 5. I could never have imagined what I was about to see. Picture in your mind the Carnival parade in Viareggio, add on a Corpus Christi procession in Rome and multiply by a thousand and you might just get an idea of what it’s like. There was the joyous chaos of a street festival while at the same time the careful attention to ageless rituals and traditions. There were no priests or ministers to lead the people in the ceremonies – everyone knew just what to do. Thousands upon thousands making their way to the riverfront, moving along in perfectly functional disorder, managing to find a way across the muddy ghats to a space along the banks where they could feely express their love and devotion. The river was pitch black, the air  cold, and entire extended families from the very young to the very aged were in the holy waters giving praise, washing clothes, brushing teeth, or just splashing about, and soon they were out again back across the muddy banks to the ghat steps, huddling together in order to manage the tricky maneuvers necessary to get out of wet clothes and into dry ones without baring their skin to public view. Hundreds of beggars lined the pathways leading to the river, aluminum pans in their outstretched hands awaiting the offerings of the newly cleansed pilgrims who had arrived with large bags of rice that they could dole out in fistfuls – this too was clearly part of the ritual. The sun slowly made its warm presence known; the changing hues of the sky were reflected faithfully on the river’s surface – and the pilgrims continued to flow in and flow out.

This extraordinary atmosphere was maintained throughout the day, culminating in an incredible show that evening. Each ghat has its own committee who organizes the festivities for that ghat, and I got the impression that on the night of Deepawali the ghats were trying to outdo each other. Hundreds of diyas were carefully placed one next to the other in long rows all along the ghats. Murals were painted on the temple walls and even the steps of the ghats were freshly painted. At some of the ghats stages were put up right on the river front where classical Indian music and dance as well as the evening puja would be performed.

We had rented a boat along with several other Kiran volunteers to see everything from the river – no doubt the best place to be. In fact boat rentals skyrocket on the night of Deepawali; nevertheless the river was as crowded with boats as Venice’s Bacino di San Marco at the festival of the Redentore. And it truly was a spectacularly unforgettable show of lights, fireworks, Indian music, and ceremonial pujas.

Paul