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Diwali in Foreign Lands - Sunny Singh Sunny Singh was born in Varanasi. She received her education in various parts of India and the world. She has worked as a journalist, teacher, and as a management executive for multinationals in Mexico, Chile and South Africa. For the last four years, she has been writing full-time. She is also a playwright. Her first play, Birthing Athena, focussed on evolving relationships and the price of ambition in post-liberalisation India. The Times of India described the play as "an intensely cathartic experience." Her first novel, Nani's Book of Suicides, had been published by Harper Collins Publishers India. Described by the Hindustan Times as a "first novel of rare scope and power," the novel explores the cultural identity of an Indian woman through a fund of myths, family lore and contemporary reality. Her second book, Single in the City: The independent woman's handbook was released on Dec 22, 2000 by Penguin India. Visit Sunny Singh's website at: http://www.sunnysingh.net/

Living away from India, I am always aware of a persistent sort of anxiety. A gnawing dullness that could almost be pain. I am old enough now to identify it as homesickness. When I meet die-hard, dyed-in-wool NRIs, they always ask me what in the world am I homesick for? And when I go home, my friends always laugh at my excitement at seeing places, things, people again. And I can never explain to anyone why I never feel whole away from India. This summer when I went home, Vandana, a dear friend received me at the airport. There was a bit of confusion. Outside the IGI airport, she couldn’t find parking, had an argument with the parking assistant, screamed at a traffic cop who glowered and grumbled at her. All the while, I was trying to find a phone booth inside the arrivals hall trying to call her.

I finally found a booth, manned by a very smart young man, who promptly charged me ten rupees for a thirty second call; even I knew that it couldn’t be more than 2 rupees at the most. But hey, I only had a fifty rupee note, and it was late at night, and he could possibly have been telling the truth when he declared he had no change. Besides, as he pointed out to me, ten rupees was less than I would pay for a call in “pardes.”

By the time I found Vandana just beyond the security cordon at the gate, I was torn between laughing and screaming in frustration. And this was just half an hour after my return to India. But then I got this massive hug from my friend, who bundled me into the car, told my mother (whom she had never met) “Don’t worry Aunty, I just picked her up.” She had organised everything, from dinner with friends, to a driver and car to take me next morning for my continuing journey.

We drove back from the airport into Delhi, in a mad rush of traffic, inching through kilometres of highway packed with cars, trucks and buses. At two in the morning, there was more traffic on that highway than most non-Indians have seen in the maddest rush hour. Vandana cursed freely through closed windows at the other drivers, filled me in on gossip about friends, flicked through her CD collection to let me listen to the newest stuff.

By the time we arrived at an incredibly late dinner with another friend, who had rushed out of work to meet me, I felt like I had never left. Delhi at night is always lovely, but now with the new flyovers, the cleaned up roadsides and reduced pollution, it reminded me of the city I knew as a child. And all through was the smell that I always associate with Delhi nights: a blend of jasmine, woodsmoke, exhaust fumes and spices.

We had kathi rolls that night…something that cannot be replicated overseas, and washed it down with Pepsi (my friends warning me smugly that my firang stomach could probably not cope even with Aquaguard water).

Only when I climbed into bed, after a rather lukewarm shower, thanks to the overnight tank that acted as a water-heater in the summer months, I realised that the gnawing feeling was gone. I was home, and every last one of my senses was luxuriating in that richness.

So why do I speak of homesickness today? Well, because it’s the festivals season….and a season when every last part of me wants to be in India. I miss everything about being home during these weeks. Most nights in the past month, I have dreamt of massive pandals for Durga Puja, woken up convinced that I was shopping for new clothes for Diwali, wondered as I walked down the Modernist streets in Barcelona whether I should actually be heading to buy gifts and sweets for friends.

And just last week, in an uncharacteristic burst of efficiency, the Catalans decided to put up the Christmas lights on the city streets. I suppose for most people the lights strung across the narrow lanes of my neighbourhood are a reminder for Christmas. For me they are just another disorienting factor for an already confused mind. Even as I walk home each evening, my conscious mind tells me that I am in a foreign land. However it is a thought I have to hold on to firmly. With the first sign of negligence, the unconscious takes over, insisting that I am headed to South Extension, to find diyas decorated with gold zari and filled choicest almonds. I hear this year, pistachios from Afghanistan are back in the market, much the joy of friends in Delhi who remember them from our childhoods.

With each day now, Diwali draws nearer. And the gnawing inside me grows more insistent. I know exactly what I will do for Diwali this year. On Dhan-teras, I will go buy something metallic for my house. Then the night before, I will drudge up a used candle to take out the “Yama ka diya” and leave it at the bottom of our stairwell. And on Diwali, I shall do the Diya-puja at dusk, and then Shastra-puja at night. And finally, on Bhai-dooj, I shall call up my brother and wish him the best for the next year.

I will probably have friends come over for dinner and we shall celebrate together, talking about Diwali at home, even as we live in a foreign land. And I shall go to bed wishing that I were back home. I will dream of my mother haranguing me into getting ready in time for the pujas; of her keeping watch while I conduct the ceremonies. More importantly, I want to spend the day handing tools to my dad as he strings up the Diwali lights on the terrace. I want to run back and forth to the market with my brother and sister for all the last-minute things that are needed. I want to be able to hug my dog close as we watch the sky light up with firecrackers. And in the evening, I want to laugh a lot, and set off crackers and eat far too much.

More importantly, I just want to feel all the different emotions that the festival season brings every year: not just joy alone, but excitement, anticipation, the nervous tension and family squabbles. Instead, I shall celebrate another Diwali in a foreign land, somehow shorn of its fun, glamour, love.

Long ago, as a child, I remember the first time I took out the “Yama ka diya” on the eve of Diwali. I remember my grandmother handing the lit diya to me late at night, and keeping watch as I walked out the gate to leave it just outside the metal doors. It was the first time I had stepped out of the house at such a late hour. It seemed darker than I had ever imagined, the night heavy around me. And the jasmine that grew next to heavy gates seemed sinister, despite its sweet smell. My grandmother had told me not to look back once I left the lamp to walk back into the house. After all, that solitary lamp on the eve of Diwali appeases Yama, who comes to collect his dues for the year. She said that I didn’t want to catch a glimpse of the god of death. I remember shivering as I walked back through the garden, feeling death’s eyes bore into my back. A buffalo mooed somewhere in the streets, probably in the nearby house of the milkman. Yet, for me, it was a sign that Yama was riding to check on the offering.

As a child, it was the only part of the Diwali rituals I could perform, was allowed to perform. Over the last few years, my mother has initiated me into all the other pujas, passing on the traditions to her eldest daughter. Now that I live away from India, I still carry out all the necessary rituals.

Yet, somehow the pujas I perform in my house in Barcelona lack the joy, the peace, the happiness that Diwali pujas have at home. The only ritual that still preserves all its emotions is of taking out “Yama ka diya.” No matter where I am, taking the lamp out seems to imbue even foreign lands with an eerie silence. And when I walk up from the staircase of my building, I make sure I don’t look back. And I can still feel the slight shiver that runs down my back, sense preternatural eyes that watch me, waiting for me to take one little look backwards.

Perhaps there is a lesson in there somewhere. Perhaps that is a sign that I should be home, in India, where Ganesh always takes precedence over Yama.

Till we connect again...

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