The Evolved "Diwali"

Festivals once marked change, they were a public calender of rituals. Today, festivals are no longer the mnemonics of life. They mark not a change of seasons, they are seasons and reasons for change. Diwali was a moment of folklore, of myth. The family gets engaged in displaying its culinary and creative skills. Mothers and wifes were known by their skills at cooking or rangoli. However the home is no longer the unit of production but of consumption. You do not decorate a house, you ornamentalise it. The most obvious is the decline of the clay diyas. Today we prefer electric lights. Think of more insidious changes. The entry of Cadbury's chocolotes in the Indian mindset denotes individualism. The box of barfis evokes a sense of collectivity.

"Think of five things you did during your childhood. How many of those rituals can you track now?" I remember my mother sweets - chakli, Karanji, Besan ladoo.... the clay fort that we used to prepare in Sangli with the building pals. Decorating the fort with different clay toys (Mawle - Maratha soldiers). I thought about the early morning bath and rushing out in the society to light the first cracker.

Today, the homemade feels shy. almost the modest in front of the new concoctions.

Earlier, festivals has a sense of the joy of consumption but never of consumerism. Diwali is a part of new religious-entertainment complex where the middle class turns the mall and the party into the core elements of its imaginaiton. Our festivals are no longer old rituals. They are, like Diwali, incorporating the new discoveries of consumption.