The Power Of Diwali

Attend a Diwali festival

-- The Music & Cultural Society of India will host a Diwali festival at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Eckstein Middle School auditorium, 3003 N.E. 75th St. The program will include bhangrhas (adult group singing), garba (a dance), children's dances and other performances. Tickets cost $4. For more information, contact Amrik Kamoh at 823-6435.

Through the memory of childhood, India's leading holiday - a `festival of lights' full of music, dance, food and reflection - continues to exert a hold over a woman born and raised in the U.S.

Diwali is for India what Christmas is for America. It is a glittering, joyous ``festival of lights,'' celebrated on a night with no moon.

The date varies, but the holiday usually falls in mid-October to early November. This year it comes Tuesday.

In India, it's a time to feast on homemade delicacies - gulab jamin (flour dumplings soaked in a light syrup), rasmali (cheese balls in a sweet, milky sauce) or gelabi (a crunchy fried treat filled with syrup), to name a few.

Music is pumped into the streets. You shop for new clothes and gifts. You clean your house and decorate it with rice, colored powders and dozens and dozens of lights.

That's the way my parents remember it, in India. But for me, born and raised in the United States, Diwali has been a mixed bag.

My parents used to tell me the lights were a beacon for Rama, the hero of the Hindu epic ``Ramayana,'' one of my favorite bedtime stories. Rama had been exiled to the forest for 14 years but returned to his kingdom on the night of Diwali.

Because that night was dark, Rama's subjects feared he would not find the town. So they lit their houses with fires, candles and diyas (clay lamps filled with oil and a cotton wick), anything that would muster light.

For Hindus, Diwali starts a new year. So it's a good idea to pay off old debts and pray that God will bless your family with happiness and good fortune.

When guests come over, you ring in the new year with music, dancing and loud, flashy fireworks.

This is Diwali, or so my parents tell me.

They were born and raised in India: my father in a small, rural village; my mother in cosmopolitan, sophisticated New Delhi.

For them, Diwali held powerful memories - memories they tried to pass on to me and their other two American-born daughters by replicating the prayers and the parties year after year in our home in Muncie, Ind.

They tried. But, despite their intentions, I have to admit that Diwali was awkward and embarrassing for me.

It meant that once again my parents would force me to go through a ritual whose sole purpose was to embarrass me and prove I could never fit in with the white, mostly Protestant kids at school and in my neighborhood.

When the kids asked why Christmas lights decorated our house so early, I'd have to explain Diwali. Later, in December, they wanted to know why our house wasn't lit up.

Because people would notice our house and see my mother's picture in the local newspaper as she performed a puja, or Hindu prayer, they would ask prying questions, wanting to know just what it was that I worshiped. I wasn't even sure then.

I'd tell them I wasn't Christian and that my parents, not me, believed God was represented not by Jesus Christ but by a figure with an elephant nose called Ganesh.

Then there'd be the roli, a red powder. In the puja, my father would wet his fingers with a vial of holy water, dip them into roli and press a red fingerprint into my forehead. The gesture was meant to be a blessing, but sometimes the powder wouldn't wash away. One more thing to explain to the kids at school.

I went through the festivities, but a few family photos show my true feelings. In one, I, as a teen-ager dressed in an American skirt and sweater, pout as I sit before a shrine my father had built in our family room out of a coffee table and silk bed covers. I was holding a thali (a round, metal pan) on which my mother had placed a vial of holy water, rice, a few flower petals, red powder, a small sweet, a burning candle and an offering of money.

As I stared at the picture, I remembered how I went through the motions of circling the thali in front of Ganesh and Lakshmi, a goddess figure who represents wealth, and pretended to pray.

Looking back, it was a strange feeling. I think that even then I did, deep down, believe in the prayer but just hated having to go through what seemed such an unorthodox spectacle.

Now, as a 27-year-old living on my own in Seattle, I take pride in being different. But this time of year still makes me feel edgy.

Soon, my mother will mail me money to buy a new dress. Sometime next week, she'll send me a ``care package'' filled with sugary, too-sweet Indian snacks, which she knows I do not like but will insist that I eat. The sweets will be part of the prasad, or offering she will make to God on Diwali.

I know my mother still secretly hopes I'll put on a sari, wear a bhindi (red makeup dot) on the forehead and find a Diwali puja in Seattle in which to participate. She knows better not to ask, though.

All she'll request is that I burn some incense, light a candle and leave at least one light burning in my apartment throughout the night.

I'll do what she asks, a big change from a few years ago when the sweets would have been stuffed in a trash can and the incense, candles and other lights would somehow ``just slip my mind.''

But I wish even these simple rituals would not seem so out of place.

Why, I wonder, does Diwali seem strange when decorating a Christmas tree and eating Thanksgiving dinner feels so natural? Thanksgiving and Christmas have nothing to do with my heritage, whereas Diwali is India's largest holiday.

One Indian, who lives in south Seattle, shared a childhood memory to which I could relate.

He is part Indian, English and Native American, and grew up on a Native American reservation in Canada. Once, he got into a fight with a 12-year-old kid over Diwali.

``He said something like, `Why do you do all those funny things at your house anyway?' '' the man recalled. ``He called my mother a witch, said she was a foreigner.

``I hit him first, but he beat me up pretty good. I remember going home all beat up and bruised and asking my mom a bunch of questions. It was the first time I remember feeling different.''

It wasn't hard in the small, Midwestern town where I grew up to feel ``different.'' Nearly any non-American, non-Christian celebration drew stares and questions.

From time to time, Indians in various cities where I've lived have invited me to join them for a puja or a community Diwali party. Usually, I refuse. I'm not sure why.

Where I grew up, most of the Indians were college students or newly married couples, which meant I had no friends my age who were Indian, as I might have had in a Dallas or a Seattle.

It made me wonder whether celebrating Diwali is easier if there's a larger community.

After talking with several Indians in the Seattle area, though, I've found that Diwali has been difficult for them as well.

If anything, I learned that the festival's meaning varies widely.

Ravi Phadnis, an accountant who lives in Shoreline, was raised as a Hindu but grew up in the Gujarat region, where it was believed Diwali was a celebration of the year's harvest. His memories include seven days of feasting, and a ceremony that involved taking a special shower to cleanse the body while firecrackers were lit outside.

Sahib Jain and his daughter, Anu, 20, of Northgate, taught me a Jainist tradition. (Jainism is a religion that advocates nonviolence and vegetarianism). To him, Diwali falls on the night on which a Jainist apostle, Mahavir Swami, received salvation from God 2,500 years ago.

A third version came from Amrik Kamoh, a Kirkland resident who is Sikh. For him, Diwali happens to be the day that a Sikh guru, Sri Harrgobind Singh, freed 52 Indian kings from the Fort of Gwalion in the 15th century, during a time when India was under Mogul rule.

But even as these families told me what their Diwalis were all about, many admitted they usually did not share their experiences with non-Indian friends.

Take Surendra and Veena Bhatia, who live in Kent. They begin to celebrate Diwali nearly two weeks in advance with a variety of pujas, special housecleanings and gatherings with other Hindus at their home. On Tuesday, their house will be decorated and brightly lit.

For all their celebrating, though, neither discusses the holiday with co-workers. Both both admit that trying to celebrate Diwali in Seattle is harder than doing it in India.

``Here, you're not in the flow,'' Veena Bhatia said. ``It's hard to get into the mood to make all the preparations. Nobody else around you is catching on to the excitement.''

In some ways, I think I've begun to agree.

Celebrating non-Christian, non-American holidays is tough for everyone, adults as well as children. You have to set yourself up as being ``different'' because in a way being different is part of your heritage, your identity.

My parents, I can see now, didn't celebrate Diwali to embarrass me but to help me learn a little more about who I am.