DEEPAVALI a.k.a. DIWALI

D E E P A V A L I – Deepavali,

D E E P A V A L I – Deepavali,

D E E P A V A L I – Deepavali,

yelled my seven-year-old nephew, as he half-heartedly wrote an imposition, which he received for writing the spelling of Deepavali wrong. On his mother's watch, the poor kid was stuck with this imposition until he bi-hearted that spelling right.

That was when my cousin, who was my nephew's ultimate role model, barged inside the house, throwing his heavy school bag on the sofa, straight to his rescue. He some how convinced my sister-in-law that he would teach my nephew the spelling.

Deepavali a.k.a. Diwali - The festival of lights!

Though I was born into a Christian family in Kerala, the stories of Ram, Sita and Ravan were bi-heart for me. Since I never saw any of my friends or neighbours actually celebrating this festival, I believed that it was just some North Indian festival, just like what I thought the festivals Baisakhi and Lohri were.

One day my elder brother came home from his hostel, claiming that they had Diwali holidays. He had brought with him a box full of sweets and a packet of diyas. Those were the days when "Diwali" became a topic of conversation in the family. Hearing me proclaim that it was a North Indian festival and people in Kerala don't celebrate it, my brother decided to prove me wrong. I was around six or seven years old that time and I had known about this festival only through my textbooks.

It was late in the evening and he took me on his bike to a nearby temple. The place was well lit by different colours of illumination lights and diyas. The stairs that led to the temple was beautifully lit by hundreds of diyas. As I stood mesmerized by the surroundings, she walked towards us. She was very pretty. When she reached our side, she bends down to my height, offered me a peanut candy and said that her name was Diya and also that she was my brother's classmate. As I was busy savouring the peanut candy and the cone ice cream that my brother had bought me few minutes back, two big boys walked towards the three of us. They were as tall as my brother but looked bigger than him. Seeing them Diya ran away. One of them punched my brother and the other shouted at him, words that I couldn't understand then. As one of them lost their balance in the action, my ice cream fell on to the ground, which resulted in me crying at the top of my voice. Seeing me cry they left my brother and stared at me. Meanwhile few uncles who stood beside us came for our rescue. Seeing me cry, they scolded those big boys for unnecessarily fighting. As my brother had nicely handled the situation by convincing them that he had come there due to me, as I was adamant to see the decorations in there, saved us from this trouble. Feeling bad at my then current state, one of them bought me a new ice cream.

On the way back home, he had made me promise that I would keep this as our little secret. As we reached home, he broke all the diyas that he brought along with him from the hostel. Though he convinced everyone that it was an accident, I knew otherwise. That time I didn't understand the head or tail of his actions.

But years later, on one Diwali night when he was at home, I cornered him with that incident that happened few years back outside the temple grounds. Though initially he tried to ignore my questions, but at the end, my threats were strong enough to make him confess the truth.

Long story-short!

Diya was his childhood crush and the two guys who fought with him were his seniors from school. As expected, I was the EXCUSE or the WILDCARD that he had, which gave him the space and the opportunity to talk to her. I didn't want to know what happened between him and Diya later on, but on that day, I knew that he took his anger on those diyas and later looked regretted for breaking them. Anyway, it had always remained as our little secret.

Now at present, when I heard his son shout the spelling of Deepavali, I couldn't help, but remember the incidents that happened on that Diwali night. 

As I sat there with a Ken Follet novel on my lap, my nephew followed by my cousin stormed inside the room with an open book. On one of its pages in big letters it was written:

"D e w a l i"

He showed me the spelling and tried to convince me that his uncle had taught him the easiest spelling of Deepavali. Seeing me stare at them, my cousin snatched the book from my nephew's hand and put a dot above "e", saying that it was actually "i" and that my nephew had forgotten to put the dot.

Meanwhile, my brother entered the house, hearing his son shouting DIWALI....DIWALI like a mantra. All of a sudden, his eyes dropped down to my length and unknowingly rested on mine. That was when my dad came into the picture asking my cousin to write the spelling of Deepavali.

For which with sheer amount of confidence he wrote:

"D i p a w a l i"

At the same time, my sister-in-law had come into that room and had accidentally glanced at what my cousin had written. Seeing the new turn of events, all of us started to laugh, as my sister-in-law directed her death glare at my cousin, while he stood there blank.