Five-day Diwali festivities comes to end with ‘Bhai Dooj’

Kanpur: With the festival of ‘Bhai Dooj, the five-day Diwali festivities came to an end on Thursday.
In fact the ‘festival of light’ is of five days which begins the day of `Teras', also known as `Dhanteras' and concludes with the ‘Bhai Dooj’ but this year due to the solar eclipse, the festival stretches up to six days.
As per the custom, sisters place vermilion ‘tilak’ on the forehead of their brothers and pray for their welfare and in return brothers offer gifts to sisters.
Sisters performed this ritual with a great zeal and many of them even covered distances of around 100 km for the ritual.
UP Road Transport Service corporation (UPSRTC) had made arrangements of special buses for the women. There was a great rush in trains too.
Meanwhile, around 1195 women with 408 children visited the Kanpur District Jail to celebrate the ‘Bhai Dooj’.
Since it is a brother-sister festival, the meeting time was extended to two hours, said jail superintendent BD Pandey. Generally, the meeting time is 11 am. but on this day it began around 9 am and continued till 4 pm, he said and added to facilitate the meeting, additional staff was deputed and for the first time in the history of this jail, chairs and cold drinking water was offered to the visitors. When asked about food served to jail inmates, Pandey said special food is offered only on the occasion of Deepawali and on other festivals only normal food is provided to them.