The society till then was still majorly opting for tailored clothes. Carnaby” had dad’s and my sizes already, as every year dad and I would have to get our uniforms stitched: school uniform for me and court uniform for dad. Mom would buy new dress material already a month before. Still, self-cooking always had the best taste and of course “Sree Krishna Sweets”. Later we started buying everything from them. When my mom used to have time, she would make Murukku by herself and the rest we would buy from a father’s friend’s shop. The others would buy from local shops or make themselves. You can see the discussions of status symbol arising from these packs! The ones who want to project themselves high in class, would buy Mysore pak and other savories from an elite sweets store like “Sree Krishna sweets”. Every family shows their signature with their selection of savouries and sweets. We distribute 20 and we receive 20 of other sorts. Altogether around 20 families would be visited in three days. Left to right: Ladoo, Mixture, Murukku & Mysore Pakįrom then onwards, mom and I begin distributing the Deepavali packs to neighbours, families and friends. It’s a half day job and I get around 20 packs of each ready. I have to pack the sweets and savouries separately in two plastic packs. She makes two sweets: Ladoo and Mysorepak and two savouries: Mixture and Nei-Murukku. She instructs me and lets me pack all the savouries and sweets in small packs: a session that I enjoy doing, as I get to eat some sweets well before Deepavali.
Mom usually starts to prepare sweets two weeks in advance. Dad usually goes to the fireworks factory in Sivakasi and buys a humongous quantity for all the kids in the family – my 4 cousins and I. For us kids, we don’t care about it as long as a box of fireworks stays in front of our door.
There are multiple stories and multiple versions citing the origin of Deepavali, but one thing common in most versions – good guy kills bad guy and people celebrate with fireworks.
For this blog post I will focus just on Deepavali. In Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India, we have two big festivals – Pongal celebrating Agriculture and Deepavali celebrating the act of Rama killing Ravaana in an epic poem “Ramayana”, a part of Indian mythology. Since the time I moved to Germany in 2009, I hardly celebrated any Indian cultual festivals.