Diwali In A Foreign Land

Our first Diwali after our wedding was celebrated in a foreign land, which is home to us, at least for the time being. We celebrated in our own way, going out to an Indian place where we ate a lot of chaat and golgappas, which we do get easily around here, but it's all packaged in boxes and you have to mix it all up yourself. But there are a few places around here where you get it served on a plate. We went to one such place. It was just lovely to gorge on all that stuff after, maybe, three or four months.

We also went to a temple nearby. We've been to the same place once before on a weekend, and, relatively, there was a throng of people. But, of course, compared to what we would have found in India, it was still wide, open spaces inside and outside the temple, and just enough parking. People were dressed in saris and kurtas. It felt different. It didn't exactly feel like back home, because this is a South Indian style temple and a lot of the people were South Indians as well, but it did have a greater sense of belonging than whatever else I've seen in the States so far.

We did a small puja at home and lit a few diyas. Now we don't have a balcony, so we did all of it inside our house. I put the diyas in a plate and my husband decided to keep a sheet of paper under them to protect the plate. Unfortunately, the paper caught fire, but fortunately we blew it out when it was only a tiny flame. Even so, it set off the overly sensitive fire alarm and we had to open the windows on a cold night (We had a little snow on the preceding snow and more than a little snow on the following evening.) to let the smoke out. Ironical, isn't it? In Delhi, we keep our windows closed because of the smoke on Diwali night.

We also got some Indian sweets for the first time since we've been here. We had no room left for dinner after all the chaat, so the sweets and the bananas from the temple were all we ate in the evening. A beautiful evening for both of us.