Tania'sDiwaliCelebration

ByKanikaG

Copyright2014byKanikaG

Website:

CoverimagecreatedbyPellG

https://sites.google.com/site/kanikagebooks/

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Tania Celebrates Diwali

Tania was really excited. The last day of schoolwas finally over. Tania's Diwali vacation hadbegun. Diwali was still a few days away. Butthere was a lot of preparation to do. Diwali isthe Indian festival of lights. It is celebratedwith sweets, lights, decorations, games andfirecrackers. Tania was now old enough to enjoyit all and she had been looking forward to itfor a while.

Mama had planned some fun activities for Tania.First on the agenda was to decorate diyas. Taniaasked "Mama, what is a diya?"

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Mama said "A diya is an oil lamp made of clay.We pour oil into the clay bowl and make a wickfrom cotton. When we light the oil soakedcotton, the flame lights up the area around. Itis very pretty. The clay lamps are plain andbrown, so we are going to paint them."

Mama and Tania sat on a large plastic mat on theliving room floor and decorated the lamps withvarious designs. They used a lot of the flashysilver and gold colours which would shinebeautifully in the lamp light.

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Diwali week is the time to do some housecleaning and decorating. Tania and mama spent amorning cleaning up and arranging cupboards anddrawers. So in the afternoon they decided it wastime for some fun. Mama told Tania they would bemaking a "Rangoli". She saw Tania's curious,puzzled expression and explained, "A Rangoli isa design made on doorsteps as a welcome sign. We

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are going to use rice flour to make it." Mamatook some rice and put it in the grinder. Taniapressed the button and made rice flour. Thenmama and Tania took the rice flour to thedoorstep. "Now what do we do mama?" asked Tania.

Mama said, "Sprinkle the rice powder to makesome nice design like this flower here."

Mama also used a little bit of some colouredpowders she had bought. Tania and mama had anenjoyable afternoon making a lovely floralRangoli.

But enough about decorating. Diwali would not becomplete without tasty Indian sweets. Mama hadbought some dry-fruit sweets from the sweetshop.

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But mama always made gulab jamuns at home. Taniahelped mama make a dough consisting of milkpowder, flour, baking powder and cream. Theythen made little round balls of dough the sizeof marbles and deep fried them till they weregolden brown. Mama also made a sugar syrupflavoured with rose water. Once the fried ballsof dough cooled a little, mama and Tania putthem in the syrup to soak.

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Soon it was the night before Diwali. Diwali ison the night of the new moon, so the nightbefore Diwali is the darkest night of the month.It is believed that the ghosts and spirits prowlthe earth on that night. So in some parts ofIndia it is customary to light 14 diyas andplace them all over the house to ward off theghosts. Tania and mama lit their beautifullydecorated diyas and placed them all over thehouse.

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On Diwali morning Tania woke up early. Grandmaand grandpa were coming in the afternoon. Mamamade a snack of "pani-puri" and "dahi-puri" foreveryone. Tania helped set up the table with thepuris, curd, mashed potatoes, tamarind chutneyand of course the super tasty "pani": waterflavoured with cumin, rock salt and mintcoriander chutney.

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Grandma and grandpa arrived around 2:00.Traditionally the family spent Diwali afternoonplaying cards. But to include little Tania, thisDiwali they played "Uno". Instead of the usualbetting the victor got to collect a certainamount of candy from the rest at the end of eachgame. Tania thoroughly enjoyed herself. She wasan expert at Uno and collected a good amount ofcandy. Everyone chatted and ate pani-puri whileplaying Uno. This was Tania's first time eatingpani-puri and she found it to be a messy and

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enjoyable experience. They also ate gulab jamunsand other sweets.

The afternoon passed by quickly with everyonehaving such a good time. Soon the sun had setand it was time for fire crackers. This was whatTania had been looking forward to most of all.The housing society had set aside some space forthe children to safely light crackers.

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Tania lit sparklers, fountains and a rotatingground fire cracker called a zameen-chakra. Lastyear mama had only let her watch. It was so muchmore fun to actually light the crackers.

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That night Tania went to bed happy and tired. Itwas the best, most exciting day she had everhad.

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The photograph of the oil lamp with flame, wasoriginally posted to Flickr.com, was uploaded toCommons using Flickr upload bot on 04:11, 1 June2008 (UTC) by Kelly (talk).

On that date it was licensed under the licensein the link below.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Cover image was created by Pell G

The pictachio sweet is a public domain imageobtained from http://pdpics.com/photo/1868-pistachio-sweet/

The Gulab jamun is a public domain imageobtained from https://pixabay.com/en/indian-sweet-gulab-jamun-indian-371357/

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