Diwali

Diwali was on 17^th of October, and I am only writing about it now, 26^th of October. I have no idea when I will have time to put this on my blog, but you ought to get an idea of how time works around here. It does not exist; I don’t have time to do everything up to date. But this entry is not about the Indian concept of time, it is about Diwali.

Diwali is the festival of lights and the festival where you worship the god of money. It is a festival of lights because this one god, or rich dude (can’t really remember), came back home after abandoning his home because he lost some kind of war. Be aware though that this information might not be correct as I seem to have forgotten lots of the details. What you do on Diwali is that you go to your friends and give away candy, during the night you eat and shoot up firecrackers and fireworks. But before fireworks and dinner you pray, or do puja as they call it in India. We got to participate and it was really cool.

What we did is that we had to use the right hand ring finger to put some red sticky stuff on the forehead of the mini statues of the gods. I was too short and unable to reach the gods so I had to go short people style and throw it towards the gods. Then we would dip some kind of flower in what I guess was holy water and drip it on the gods. After that we would do a wavy action with our hand over some candles, and in the before saying a silent prayer we would spread leaves from a yellow flower over the gods. It was really cool, but I felt a bit weird doing it as well.

The fireworks in India are insane! They make so much sound and go absolutely everywhere. There were very little safety regulations, which was quite worrying. But Ankit has a big house and on top of his roof we got a nice view to all of the fireworks. One, which was really bad, was a small bomb. All it would do is make the biggest bang I had ever heard, followed by a ringing sound in your ear. NOT fun. But there were others which were really nice.

Dipti, Ankit's wife, helping her son lighting the firecracker

Dinner was extremely good, lots of Indian food. I love the food here because it has so much taste. We don’t eat meat though as most of the people in Kullu Valley are vegetarian. Quite ironic how Bendik who’s a vegetarian had to start eating meat for Western Sahara (Apparently all he eats there is camel meat) and I who do eat meat had to stop. But, surprisingly enough, I do not miss eating meat.

People also paint their floors, I don’t know why. But take a look at the picture, it is really cool.

We slept at the neighbouring family as kids they said that would be safest. We had no problems with that whatsoever, because the last few days before Diwali kids have been knocking on our door leaving firecrackers outside ready to go off as we open the door. Many of the kids here are such pranksters. But all in all, Diwali was a good experience. (Apart from when I got a bit of a firecracker right next to my eye. But no worries; my vision took no harm from it)