Diwali & the promise of light

Looking back, I remember Diwali afternoons as being a time of much hustle and bustle. Abbu, our father, would drive to Bhogal, the nearest market from our home in Nizamuddin East in Delhi. One or the other of my siblings would accompany him on this annual expedition. Abbu would return laden with all manner of Diwali treats: kandeels made from fluorescent paper, several dozens of unglazed clay diyas in assorted sizes, small beautifully painted clay temples with a tiny depression for a diya on each of the four corners, kheel-batashe (puffed rice and small, hard, coin-shaped discs of sugar), and an assortment of sugar animals shaped like deer, lion, horses, tigers. The latter would be consumed with much relish and no thought for hygiene or calories.

And since this was an age as yet unaware of the ills of hydrogenated vegetable oils high in unhealthy trans-fats, we used ‘Dalda’ or ‘Rath’ vanaspati ghee for cooking. A small pouch of mustard oil was bought especially for the diyas. But, first, the diyas had to be washed and soaked in water lest they drink up too much of the oil. The family’s first-aid kit was ransacked for a roll of cotton wool that was divided into equal-sized pieces with mathematical precision and then the tiny wads of cotton were rolled between eager young palms, with each sibling vying to produce the perfectly shaped wick! By evening, we would be clamouring to line the diyas, each with a wick neatly nestling in its belly, along the low boundary wall of our home. An adult was usually entrusted with the task of pouring just the exact amount of mustard oil and eventually lighting the diyas and placing one in the kandeels too, which would flutter merrily from the branch of a tree in the courtyard.

No one found it in the least odd that a practising Muslim should bring these offerings, traditionally placed before the idol of Lakshmi before the puja, and include his family in this exuberant celebration of a festival that was, in a strictly religious sense, not ‘ours’. My mother would place the painted temples, aglimmer with tiny lamps, beside the main door with a rough-and-ready rangoli made from whatever she could source from her gamla garden. What is more, no one within the family or the extended neighbourhood found this enthusiasm least worthy of comment. Possibly because this was an India not yet polarised between the binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’. And so, our home was simply one in a long row of homes almost identically adorned.

Over the years, given my work in and around Urdu literature, I have been struck repeatedly by one singular fact: seldom if ever does a poet fall victim to bigotry, prejudice and narrow-mindedness; a propagandist or publicist might, but not a poet. And the Urdu poet in particular has always been known for his liberalism and eclecticism. Even in matters of religion or religious occasions, he has always spoken for qaumi yakjahati (national solidarity/unity) and muttahida tehzeeb (united/composite culture), on communal harmony and the co-mingling of cultures.

Hindu and Sikh poets have written passionate reams on Eid and Milad-un-Nabi and also produced vast amounts of soz (elegiac poetry), marsiya (elegy), naat (praise), manqabat (devotional poem) just as Muslim poets have waxed eloquent on Holi, Diwali, Janmashtami, Gurpurb, Christmas, Basant, Rakhi, not to mention large numbers of heart-warming poems on Ram, Krishan, Shiv, Guru Nanak, Buddha, Mahavir and Isa Masih.

Diwali has come in for more than its fair share of attention from the Urdu poet because of its message of peace and promise of light. Given the sheer number of nazms and ghazals — either directly on Diwali or bearing references to the lamps of Diwali — what follows is merely a sampler. Let us begin with Nazir Akbarabadi, the 18th-century poet from Agra, who is urging us to go about collecting all the kheel, batashe, diye, mithai needed in ‘Diwali ka Samaan’; written over 200 years ago, it paints a scenario very similar to the one I had witnessed in my childhood:

Then there’s Ale Ahmad Suroor, who is intoxicated by the light from countless lamps that can lift the heaviest of hearts:

In ‘Yeh Raat’, Makhmoor Saeedi tells us why we wait so eagerly for this one night:

Arsh Malsiyani reminds us of the story behind the celebrations:

Harmatullah Karam talks of Kaikeyi’s defeat and Ram’s victory in the ‘Ramayan’ being narrated by the lamps:

Kaif Bhopali looks back with nostalgia at a multicultural past:

Elsewhere, if not direct references to the festival, Diwali ke diye find mention in

different ways:

With Diwali round the corner, I peer out of my window into the murky, toxic smog. Shining luridly through the gloom are rows of electric lights up and down my street, installed by electricians hired for the job weeks in advance. Despite all the talk of a ‘green Diwali’, the crackers have been going off sporadically for days now; they will burst with greater frenzy on  Diwali night, adding to the noxious cocktail of suspended particulate matter and causing the AQI to fall off the scales. Interspersed with the crackers are the piteous whines of pets whose terror will only peak over the next few days.

The fluorescent lights, more appropriate for a wedding hall, will remain in situ for almost three months — they will cover the duration of the ‘festive season’ from now till Christmas and New Year in a classic instance of ‘paisa vasool’.

Once known as gulabi jaadey, literally meaning ‘pink winters’, Diwali also heralded the onset of halcyon days stretching in a golden arc from late October to late November across much of North India; it was a time of mellow sunshine, blue skies, gentle breezes, glowing afternoons. These seem like a distant memory now, especially for those of us who live in big cities; soon they will become an urban legend relegated to the same status as qissa-kahanis of kings and queens, fairies and elves.

But for the people of a certain generation, it was once a lived reality. The unmistakable scent of the saptaparni flowers and the tremulous beauty of the har singhaar, the call of the dhunna, cotton-wool carder, as he went home to home carding old cotton-wool to be filled in the covers of new quilts and mattresses, the early Nagpur oranges, roasted moongphalis, and crunchy singharas — Diwali was once the harbinger of all these as days got shorter and nights steadily longer and that pleasurable in-between period that was neither too hot, nor too cold.

On a personal note, Diwali once also marked another important occasion: the putting away of cottons and the taking out of silks and light woollens with the reverse happening on Holi, when summer clothes would be brought out and woollens carefully packed away in mothballs and neem leaves. I have watched my mother do it and before that, my grandmother: it’s a ritual I follow faithfully though I doubt my daughters will, given the abundant use of ACs and heaters and the looming bogey of global warming.

To those who detect only nostalgia and lament in this essay, let me hasten to clarify that this is not a requiem to a lost age; it is, if anything, a clarion call to retrieve our festivals from the clutches of ostentation and display, from vacuous materialism and conspicuous consumption, and to live lives that are more attuned to the seasons before it’s too late. Koi lauta de mere beete huye din….