Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Celebrating Diwali in the US

I know this is terribly late for (or early) Diwali but here is some glimpses into my Diwali celebration decor last year.Living outside of India my daughters don't get as much exposure
to our beloved festivals as I would like them to have.So they don't really know what it is to pig out on mithai(besides these day we worry about the calories).To light patakha's (fire crackers)
its illegal were we live .But each year I try to make it as exciting for them as I can. I still remember
my daughter being five and saying she wasn't really very excited about diwali "Not like its Christmas"!! We were going to the usual potluck dinner.That statement saddened me a lot but
I realize she didn't know how exciting diwali was she didn't really see the fun part of it as I did
growing up of course she looks forward to Christmas because its so festive here all her friends
are excited and THE PRESENTS!!!
So I thought why not adapt it to suit her environment. So I decided to have a diwali gift exchange among all her Indian friends( a big Hit) then the next hurdle was the fireworks Its Illegal in my county and not available anytime except 4th of July So we combined a Dusherra tradition of
burning the Ravan ka putla with Diwali. Diwali usually falls around Halloween so my friend used a straw scarecrow as a base for a Ravan.

she certainly put a lot of effort into it and here what happened to it !!


The Kids loved listening to the Story of Ramayan and burning the evil ravan.

I am not too good at rangoli so I did a mini rangoli as my centerpiece with
battery candles over store bought.Why fake candles ? just thought it was safer with so many kids around.

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