Celebration of Diwali Festival in India

Diwali Celebration. (c) Photo from google.com

The neighbours around our house started preparing with putting up of colourful lights on the houses and beautifully decorated with flowers on the doors and windows. It’s amazing to know that each household spends more than Rs. 20,000 for buying of presents to their relatives and other special gifts for dearest one on this day. Once, I came across thousands of people in one of the city in Delhi, shopping with all necessary kitchen items, costumes, eatable things and etc. I was curious that why these people were getting busy. But I came to released only when we were declared holiday for Deepavali, popularly known as the festival of lights, from the Deans desk of our University.

According to Hindu legends they worship Lord Lakshmi on this day because on this day, Lakshmi emerged from Kshira Sagar, the Ocean of Milk, after the great churning of the oceans. On this day, Vishnu came back to his abode the Vaikuntha, so those who worship Lakshmi receive the benefit of her benevolent mood, and are blessed with mental, physical and material well-being. While not a large occasion for the Buddhist community, Buddhists celebrate Diwali through the chanting of mantras and remembering Emperor Ashoka who is said to have converted to Buddhism on this day.

 The Diwali festival in India is wonderful; wonderful in many ways because it’s a celebration of their culture and traditions with religious background in their history.  For Hindus, Diwali is one of the most important festivals of the year and is celebrated in families by performing traditional activities together in their homes. The most charming and interesting moment for the festival is blasting of partaker bombs in the space around the houses for whole night. Our house owner asked us to blast his bombs for the festival and we enjoyed for sometimes playing with the fires and bombs in front of his house. But it’s a disturbing moment for students like us, when examinations are nearing and not allowed to sleep peacefully during the night.

We wonder when our neighbors kept on blasting for whole night, and we had conversations among our friends, “these people are keeping empty stomach during their festival and keep on blasting and polluting with noises and smokes which is also violating the personal rights of person like us”. We had a good joke as laying on our bed whole night without having good sleep on time. It must be a Diwali gift for students like us, but for our Indian friends we wish you all Happy Diwali.