My Diwali experience

I had the good fortune of being put in contact, by American meditator friends, with a meditator in Jaipur, Anil Mehta. He was kind enough to pick me up at the bus when I came for my course, give me a tasty lunch at his home, and bring me to the meditation center. After the course, I called him up and he invited me over for the following day, which happened to be the first and principal day of Diwali. I expected maybe another lunch, to meditate for an hour, visit a bit, then go back to my hotel. It turned out to be quite a bit more.

When I got there (having been picked up at my hotel by one of the workers from Anil and his brother's workplace), Anil's sister in law Vinu was putting the finishing touches on lunch, which was rice pulau, spicy dal, a cabbage dish, fresh chapatis, raita, and some really good Indian sweets. Indian sweets, by the way, are extremely sweet but have a subtle flavor from the careful use of spices. Afterwards, Anil, Vinu and I meditated together for an hour, then Anil and I chatted for a while, looked at books. Not feeling well, Anil went to lie down but urged me to make myself comfortable and stick around for the evening.

I did, and thus witnessed this Jain family's Diwali, including the preparation of their altar, under the charge of Anil's dad B.D. B.D. has sat one Vipassana course, but decided that he was happier with devotion and worship of gods and saintly people than this practice. Accordingly, he maintains an altar with various photos of saints like Sai Baba, statues of gods, sacred writings, etc. Diwali being a special occasion and a family occasion, the altar was set up with a thin mattress in front of it for the family to sit on during the puja (worship), and B.D. carefully selected a postcard with images of (if memory serves) Lakshmi (goddess of wealth), Parvathi (consort of Shiva), and Radha; a medallion with an image of Sai Baba; a statuette of Ganesha, the elephant god; along with setting up incense, dye/paint, and other necessaries.

In due time, I sat down with the family, from the two apartments on this floor of the building, to start the puja, with the women all dolled up in special saris and the older men dressed in pure white traditional kurta pijama (that's the long roomy shirt with matching pants). B.D. officiated, chanting from sacred texts, while me and Anil's brother Sunil took some photos (sorry, I'll have to get them put on a disc later to show you). While it was a serious worship service, at the same time, there was a light-hearted feeling, with all of us laughing and joking around, and people other than B.D. also taking turns doing some chanting or singing. Later, in the apartment next door where Anil's sister and family live, we did the same thing and the 16 year old daughter brought out some Christian hymns in English from her Jesuit school to sing with me and friends who had stopped by.

All of this activity included much food, some of it in the form of prasad, or the blessed food (Indian sweets in this case) that had been offered to the gods and now was to be consumed by their devotees. Not realizing at first that food would be an insistent theme for the entire remainder of the evening, I filled up on the delicious sweets the first time around. Next door, more prasad was passed around; then there were snacks, a light meal of yogurt and a deep-fried something plus poori (deep fried bread) and a bean/lentil dish, all pushed with relentless hospitality that I didn't want to refuse for fear of being impolite.

After playing with fireworks with the kids outside (some boys from the building had a box full of what seemed like quarter sticks of dynamite they kept setting off about 50 feet away from us, without any malice but even so, it was painful and I tried to plug my ears every time one was about to go off), we all piled into two cars and headed off to another part of town to visit Anil's uncle, an architect who had thoroughly redesigned the interior of his house after buying it. I was made to feel even more extravagantly welcome here, if that was possible, as though I were the guest of honor--photos were taken with me, and everyone followed me through the house when I asked for a tour, joking with me and listening to my comments with interest. Of course, I was practically forced to have more snacks. As Sunil was giving me a ride back to my hotel, I seriously feared that I'd have to retch out the window, but fortunately I was able to save self and hosts from such drastic embarassment, leaving only pleasant memories.