254 Lights

BENGALURU: Whether you call it Diwali or Deepawali, it is one of the biggest festivals for large communities in India that sees the largest migration of people from all over the country from their places of work back to their hometowns to celebrate the festival with their families and friends. Few other annual migrations compare - perhaps the lunar new year festival in China, maybe eid in Bangladesh, but not really many others.

Festivals bring up family nostalgia like few other things, but they are also tricky. For people in relationships, it brings up the question of where they would go for the festival - which family of origin gets the pleasure, and pain, of their visit. When relationships are organized along traditional lines and rules formed over generations, this is simple enough. The first year after solemnizing a relationship gets one family, and then the rest are all the other family’s - that too, until the new relationship can assert itself to form their own rituals around the festival. The attempts to assert a new set of rituals are not easy. It usually requires people in the relationship to start with excuses of not getting leave from their office, or being stuck in a far away city without any means of travel or some such story, and keep repeating such story for a few years till it becomes a new ritual of sorts.

In Hollywood movies, this theme runs for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, just like Indian movies from Bollywood to Kollywood highlight this dilemma for Diwali/ Deepavali. The question is: should people in new relationships look to mark festivals and holidays together, or return back to their families of origin? If it is a cross-cultural relationship of any sort, what would they make as a set of rituals for themselves - will it be an amalgamation of their respective families, or a whole new set of ways to celebrate and remember the festival? Or, would they want to ditch it altogether and just go away somewhere, avoiding all the stress?

As we start to be a unit - whether with someone we love, or even just by ourselves, each of us has to face this question, and in one way or another, our own way of marking the festival will emerge. If we are conscious about it, recognize what we like and cherish about how the holiday is marked, be clear what we want to celebrate and what parts we just do not want anymore, talk about it, then we might be able to make it a really celebratory event. Otherwise, we just try to make everyone happy, compromise here and there, and end up with a holiday that we are just glad to get through in one piece.Festivals of light are great when there is a lightness about it, and we are able to appreciate each other, and not just go through it. For us to be the light in our loved ones’ life, we need to make an effort.