Diwali: dibiya aur diya

Katha · The story

Why we keep it

Ram returned to Ayodhya on the new-moon night of Kartik after fourteen years of exile and the war at Lanka, and the people lit rows of lamps so that he could find his way in the dark. That is the Diwali of the Ramayan. The Diwali of the village is older than that: it is the night the house, the fields, the cattle shed, the well and the gachhi are shown to Lakshmi, one lamp at a time, so that she knows where the family lives.

The blog's post "Bachpan ki Diwali" remembers how it went in Malinagar. Houses whitewashed a week before. Crackers bought days early and dried in the sun so they would not fizzle. Two kinds of lamp: the dibiya, a small clay kerosene lamp with a lid, and the diya with mustard oil or ghee. The first diya at Sokha Baba, the household deity, then at Kali Badi, then home, the fields, the cattle shed, the well and the orchard. Children ran about with ukka, bundles of dried sticks and grass set alight and whirled. Dinner was rice, dal, pakoras, bhajji and sweets, and the sweets were the point.