Its Diwali!

We indians are so pampered with all these festivals - its like you cant live with or without them!! Every other week we have something or the other to celebrate - rather a reason to eat sumptously!! Not that I crib eating , but its probably the only reason that many of us NRIs are skinny that we dont get to eat all those sweets and namkeens like we used to back in india.

Diwali is so much fun in younger years...I sound like an old woman now - no that can never happen ;) ..we kids on the block would have a competetion as to who'd be the first to wake up - like 2am and 3am and go fire cracker on everyones' compound wall to wake them up...its so much fun that day.
All moms would not disclose their sweets/karams till that day to not let out recipes or whatever damn reason that may be..who cared, we were busy collecting fire crackers! Starting off with nalangu, a nice oil bath and the new dresses would be ready to wear..its such a nice feeling those days, cos you'd get to wear a new dress maybe 3-4 times a year....unlike times now. These would usually be the best of dresses yu'd ever get, so there'd be matching earrings, bangles and what not!! I've literally fleeced my dad some years i think, poor guy wud always just wear some shirt given to him on some occasion ..and occasionally - a new veshti! you cannot argue with men of those times on such matters. Moms are always the opposite - atleast mine is !! She would be ready with all the displayable artifacts for this year! She is a fun loving woman - so comes under our category of ppl!

so all done, we venture out, to visit and display ourselves on our lane, talking abt wheres and whats of the purchases..what a mundane way to start the day!! then we'd come back home, eat something (that was understood right!!) burst some crackers - at dawn start out on expeditions!
yeah it wud be from house to house - eating/"tasting" as i wud recall - all aunties sweets & karams..this was fun, cos its a test for your stomach an early winter morning! most of them were good - i'd rather say this in case some of those folks read this blog later some day!!

Anyways - these thoughts came by as i visited several of our indian websites to see that everyone is in a Diwali mood - selling , sending, buying gifts. And we - here are as usual getting to our daily routines - without much of a diff- Does this make you think that we are losing out on our culture??