While Diwali officially landed on October 19th, the holiday began two days earlier in the Jatan office. October 17th is a Hindu holy day for the goddess Lakshmi who promises wealth and good health. On this day, people purchased new and usually shiny items such as, metal kitchenware like plates and water pitchers or items like jewelry and silver. During the puja for the goddess Lakshmi, the newly purchased item is used and blessed, bringing wealth and health to the person or the organization for the next year. That day we held an office puja for the goddess, blessing the employees, the organization, and even the balance book. During the puja, the office lit up with employees wishing each other "Happy Diwali" and welcoming one another to join them for Diwali celebrations on the 19th.
On Wednesday the 18th, I flew to New Delhi to meet up with my friend Vedant Chandra. I would be spending the Diwali Holiday with him and his family in Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh (Pilibhit is located near Nepal – it’s a small city but has an incredible tiger reserve nearby). The next morning, Vedant and I set off for Pilibhit, leaving at 5am with hopes of beating some of the holiday rush. That hope was short lived. Around 9am we smacked into traffic. We had reached the Ganges River, where thousands of Hindus had come to bathe on the holy day. While it was an incredible sight to see so many people jumping into the river, the traffic jam was constricting. We finally reached Pilibhit at 11:30, where after a brief but necessary nap the celebrations began.
Diwali is known as the festival of lights but for an American celebrating his first Diwali, I'll describe it as a combination of New Years, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July. Over the course of the holiday, I experienced prayer, food, drink, and cards, all with one of my best friends and his extended family. We attended three different pujas, one which included cows and cow poop (Govardhan Puja). We attended the family's rotating lunch party and dinner party which were hosted at two different homes the first day and at the family's Haveli on the second. And we set off a large quantity of fireworks – who doesn’t love blowing things up?
During the various parties, I found myself sitting down to more games of poker than I've played over the previous year. I learned a new card game called Teen Patti, which has one too many variations (pretty sure the goal was to take my money). And I participated in some courtyard cricket with Vedant's cousins.
The entire holiday was an amazing experience and I can't thank the Chandra family enough for making me feel like I'm part of the family - Chandra's if you are reading this, I'm coming out on top during our next poker game!
Cheers!
P.S. Continuous blogging in a foreign country can get a bit tedious. Between work, travel, and the always off chance that you might get food poisoning or in my case, accidentally eat Gluten, creating content can be difficult. Since I've been operating on a 2 week delay between adventures and posts, I believe that the easiest thing for me to do is to summarize my adventures over the past month with a few shorter posts. My next post will be next week!