I don't pretend to know a great deal about Diwali, the
Hindu festival of lights. These are the things I do tend to know off the top of my head: It's the biggest holiday of the year for Hindus, and involves both a great deal of decorative lights—candles or otherwise—as well as fireworks, which kind of makes it comparable in the U.S. to a cross between Christmas and Independence Day. I do know that every time Diwali rolls around, the horrid smog in Delhi is
made even worse.
This context, of course, is wildly changed in the States, where we have a large majoroty of Christians (63%) and India is majority Hindus (80%). Here in the States, Hindus don't get mass media involvement in their biggest holiday, and instead have to celebrate with local communities, or, as in the case of the event Shobhit and I met Karen at yesterday, a city sponsored "cultural festival"—this one being
among many that occur at Seattle Center for different cultures throughout the year. (Shobhit and I just went to another one part of the same series, the "
Dia de Muertos Festival," the Sunday before Halloween.)
According to Shobhit, it seemed very obvious to him that—as Karen had already kind of vaguely predicted—there was something not quite fully authentic about the Diwali Festival yesterday. He was a little stuck on the use of the phrase "hare Krishna" with Diwali (in fact the projected "HAPPY DIWALI" up on the wall had the phrase directly beneath it, which I
decided to crop out), telling Karen and me that the whole "Hare Krishna" group is a very American thing, and people don't tend to use the phrase in conjuntion with Diwali in India.
I tried to look up what organization was presenting this festival, and apparently it's "in partnership" with
Northwest Share, whose stated purpose is frustratingly broad: "organizing programs for the benefit of the general public in the areas of Health, Arts,Culture,Relationships and Education." That is clearly not specific to the local population of South Asian heritage, and I have no clue which such people they partnered with.
I only know that the festival was definitely smaller in scope than
Dia de Muertos festival had been, as that one had the most interesting stuff inside Fisher Pavlion, which was now closed to set up for the upcoming "Seattle Christmas Market." Thus, Diwali Festival was just in the Armory, where Shobhit and I met up with Karen, and we hung out for barely more than an hour.
There were also fewer booths at the Diwali festival, but just as Karen had hoped, there was a booth where people were doing henna. Virtually every booth at this festival did not post strict prices, and would just say "suggested donation," usually of only five bucks—including the henna! Karen said that even if they'd been charging $20 she would have paid for it. Granted, at that price they likely would not have gotten as many clients, so maybe the difference was a wash.
Shobhit left Karen and me in the henna line to go get some food, which didn't even have a donation price, just a donation box; I think Shobhit gave them five bucks, before they gave him two plates when he only wanted to get one. He tried to offer one to Karen but she said she wasn't hungry, so Shobhit and I both got
a nice lunch—nothing to write home about, but for a table at an event like this, actually pretty impressively tasty.
I briefly considered getting henna myself, then decided against it. Karen was the only one who got it done, and Shobhit and I just waited patiently for them to finish, even though Karen tried to encourage us to wander around until she was done. We had kind of done that already.
When she was done, we browsed booths a little bit, but Karen being a wheelchair user and being behind even a small crowd meant she couldn't even see the booth, so she would pretty quickly want to move on. She did suggest we go up to the second floor to take a look at the cultural dances happening on the stage from up there, which was a good idea; that's how I got the cool elevating shot, through the glass wall of the elevator.
We kind of saw everything we could see pretty quickly, and then went back downstairs, where Karen suggested we find a table to sit at and chat for a bit. I spied a single open table in the dining area on the west side of the Armory, and I had myself one of the mini chocolate cupcakes Karen brought us, because she made some at home and said she made too many. Shobhit wanted me to give as many away as possible now that he's back on Weight Watchers. I went next door to watch a movie with Alexia last night (
Six Days Seven Nights, easily the dumbest of the Harrison Ford movies we've watched so far), and when I got back only two of the cupcakes were left.
Diwali, which, much like Easter, is timed each year based on the lunar cycle—in this case, landing on the day of the new moon each autumn. (Ironically, this scheduling is directly tied to rituals and traditions of Hinduism, whereas in the case of Easter, the timing—in that case, the first Sunday after the
full moon on or after the spring equinox—is derived from early Christians' desire for the holiday to occur around the time of Jewish Passover, and Passover is determined by the lunar cycle.)
Diwali is actually
a five-day festival, but wit the third (middle) day being the main celebration, the one that occurs on the new moon. Clearly this would be related to the whole "Festival of Lights" idea, given there is no moonlight reflected off a New Moon.
And: tonight is the New Moon. The "Diwali Festival" happened yesterday at Seattle Center, just as the Saturday closest to the actual holiday—cultural festivals are often timed this way. But it was tonight, rather than last night, that when Shobhit came home from work, we lit a bunch of candles, including the two
clay lamps Shobhit actually bought at Seattle Center yesterday. Those were the two more authentic lights we lit tonight, but then lit a whole bunch of other candles, which Shobhit went out of his way to make sure were placed all over the condo—most were in the living room; there was one each in the kitchen, both of the two bathrooms, and in the primary bedroom. He placed three candles on the windowsill in the guest bedroom, and three more out on the balcony outside the guest bedroom window.
I took a video clip touring all of the candles in the condo, and then set the video to a traditional Hindu song called "Om Jai Jagdish Hare" ("
Oh Lord of the Universe), a choice Shobhit suggested when I asked if there were any particular song strongly associated with the holiday. I looked it up on TikTok and immediately recognized it as the first track from my "
Matthew and Shobhit's Wedding" playlist, as it was one of the songs played at our wedding ceremony in 2013. On TikTok, however, I could only find a clip of the song one minute long, and my video tour is a minute and 23 seconds.
It took me a couple of minutes, but I did manage to problem solve this: I found the music file on my external hard drive, and was thus able to combine the first 1:23 of the song with the video in iMovie on my laptop, and
then post it—to
my socials, to my Diwali 2023 photo album on Flickr (which, with an additional 7 shots from today, now contains
30 shots, a
record), and I even texted it to Shobhit, at his request, so that he could send it to his mom on WhatsApp. His mom called shortly after, and they were speaking in Hindi so I couldn't tell why Shobhit was cracking up. He overheard his mom bragging to her maid about the Diwali decor her son had up, but was embellishing it, saying he had pictures of gods up—which we do not; we only set out the candles.
In any case, given how much I truly love Christmas, the more time goes by, the more Shobhit wants to do something for Diwali each year, even if it's just to light the candles. (This year he also
put rice on his forehead.) I feel like we should do what we can to celebrate Diwali as much as we can each year. The festival at Seattle Center was okay, but I suspect the one that also happens in Bellevue is better, given the larger South Asian population on the eastside. We should check that one out next year.
[posted 10:40 pm]
