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Happy Diwali, everyone! I know I said it before, but it bears repeating, and thank you so much, everyone who sent their good wishes last night. Much appreciated.
This morning, I did Miss Gow's annual assembly on Hinduism, and it was too short but otherwise went very well. She does it in the interests of general education, as a surprising amount of people know very little about it. People I've known for years seem unaware that I'm not a Muslim, or even that Hinduism and Islam are different. So we had our assembly, with dupattas, diyas and a Powerpoint presentation. I did my bit, as promised, and Becca did the sound, also as promised. It went well.
However, in the interests of general education, as it were, I'd rather like to show people something of what we do on Diwali. With the obvious caveat - this is how one family does it, and other people may have other ways of doing things - we begin with the following picture and move on from there.
( the unexpected Diwali greeting )
Slightly surprising, this. Wyeth are long-standing drug reps, and give us pens and teapots and all kinds of stuff, but this was new and made me giggle. Pedar said the British doctors were grabbing the boxes of sweets as fast, if not faster than the Indian ones. He thought it very commendable of them - the drug reps, that is. Heh.
( lantern light )
This slightly spooky pic is of the first light, the one that went outside the front door. Diwali is of course the festival of light - it's no accident that it falls on new moon in the middle of winter. I've always thought of it as a general bird-flip to the universe in general - that is, it may be dark but that doesn't scare us. We'll just turn on all the lights. And we did, starting with all the electric lights and moving on to the more traditional sources of it.
( lights on the kitchen table )
Blurry but I love it. Simply put, this is the stone table in the kitchen some time after we got going. The small candles, tealights in English, diya in Hindi, are my favourite things ever. We get them in packs of fifty from Ikea.
( the lights and me )
The puja was done here, along with prasad (fruit, sweets, flowers) behind the kitchen door. I'm aware I look stoned. I was very very tired.
( the lights, my mother and me )
Pretty self-explanatory, really. After the puja was done, Pedar took this picture of the lights, my mother and me. Following this, we took the diyas and put them in every room of the house.
( and finally,my lights )
This is rather a strange picture, I know, but I liked it. Basically, this is my room and those were my tealights - looks like there's three, but there are only two. The third is a reflection in the mirror. Anyone with very very sharp eyes may be able to make out the Save Quiggins poster also reflected in the mirror.
This is the point where the lights begin to burn down, it's all over for another year, etc. But see what I mean when I said it was a pretty festival? It really, really is.
This morning, I did Miss Gow's annual assembly on Hinduism, and it was too short but otherwise went very well. She does it in the interests of general education, as a surprising amount of people know very little about it. People I've known for years seem unaware that I'm not a Muslim, or even that Hinduism and Islam are different. So we had our assembly, with dupattas, diyas and a Powerpoint presentation. I did my bit, as promised, and Becca did the sound, also as promised. It went well.
However, in the interests of general education, as it were, I'd rather like to show people something of what we do on Diwali. With the obvious caveat - this is how one family does it, and other people may have other ways of doing things - we begin with the following picture and move on from there.
( the unexpected Diwali greeting )
Slightly surprising, this. Wyeth are long-standing drug reps, and give us pens and teapots and all kinds of stuff, but this was new and made me giggle. Pedar said the British doctors were grabbing the boxes of sweets as fast, if not faster than the Indian ones. He thought it very commendable of them - the drug reps, that is. Heh.
( lantern light )
This slightly spooky pic is of the first light, the one that went outside the front door. Diwali is of course the festival of light - it's no accident that it falls on new moon in the middle of winter. I've always thought of it as a general bird-flip to the universe in general - that is, it may be dark but that doesn't scare us. We'll just turn on all the lights. And we did, starting with all the electric lights and moving on to the more traditional sources of it.
( lights on the kitchen table )
Blurry but I love it. Simply put, this is the stone table in the kitchen some time after we got going. The small candles, tealights in English, diya in Hindi, are my favourite things ever. We get them in packs of fifty from Ikea.
( the lights and me )
The puja was done here, along with prasad (fruit, sweets, flowers) behind the kitchen door. I'm aware I look stoned. I was very very tired.
( the lights, my mother and me )
Pretty self-explanatory, really. After the puja was done, Pedar took this picture of the lights, my mother and me. Following this, we took the diyas and put them in every room of the house.
( and finally,my lights )
This is rather a strange picture, I know, but I liked it. Basically, this is my room and those were my tealights - looks like there's three, but there are only two. The third is a reflection in the mirror. Anyone with very very sharp eyes may be able to make out the Save Quiggins poster also reflected in the mirror.
This is the point where the lights begin to burn down, it's all over for another year, etc. But see what I mean when I said it was a pretty festival? It really, really is.
