Diwali with friends or family

Diwali is about togetherness, good food, fireworks. The excitement starts from spring cleaning, finding lost treasures. Planning the menu, preparing for puja, visiting those relatives you only see once a yearJ

Lighting diyas, sparklers, anars, chakris, bombs. Remember those black thingies you could light and they would become snake like? The boys loved the bombs, I was not so sold on them. Ladis, the 1000 ladis were pretty though.

Rockets whizzing in the sky, seeing the rockets people from other houses had let loose.

This year, Diwali was more about the building party. I thought there would be dinner and fireworks. After togging up, we arrived to find a stage, centre table seating and a skit going on.

Kids were telling us to separate garbage. It’s good we’re raising better kids J Some lovely dance performances by neighbours followed, with those fake diyas. The rangolis were so artistic. Peacocks, Ganeshas and what have you.

Even though the rain played spoilsport, the show went on. The games were so much fun. We split up in teams and got to know each other better instead of huddling in cliques.

First, a couple of men from each team had to blow balloons and then rush where the balloon fell. Then, they had to blow it again. Their partner at the other end would be doing the same. Whoever managed to exchange places first would win.

Our team won! No one was more surprised than the participants.

Unfortunately, then we got to know that it is a trial round L But, we still won the actual round.

I ended up participating in the kids round as my team was a kid short. We played musical hula hoops, like musical chairs. I was flattered that the team considered me slim enough to slip through a hula hoop with a kid!

We were the first to be knocked out sadly. Guess what saved us? That’s right! Trial round J We still got knocked out fairly early though. A couple of tots from our team managed to come first though. Small is beautiful!

The ladies had to tie one foot each together, in partners. Then they had to try to kick a ball in a bucket. Hilarious. We won overall though.

Then there was a kids scavenger hunt. Many kids came to me, “Aunty do you have a comb or a mirror?” Next time I’ll be better prepared kids!

The food was decent too. Rasgullas, icecream, undiya, bhindi, paneer.

It was great meeting everyone. When you’re away from family, the people you live with become your family. That’s what happened to me in college too. Even if there are no diyas, fireworks, good food- great company is enough to have a blast on Diwali. What say?