Thursday, November 08, 2007

'The most pompous festival in India'

Excerpts from today's Hindu Metro Plus (Hyderabad edition):

"Deepavali, the biggest and the most pompous festival in India, is celebrated differently in different regions, but all treading the traditional path."

Vinita Pittie, Designer: "Within a period of one month we worship all the main female deities. We all do it, but don’t know why."

and

"The house is vacuum cleaned (our version of spring cleaning) and decorated passionately with oil lamps and flowers. ."

and

"...we bathe ourselves with a paste of haldi, gram, seasame seeds and other Indian ingredients. "

Deepika Reddy, Danseuse: "Since I’m also a guru, this is a good time for my students to seek my blessings and they come laden with boxes of sweets."

I think 'pompous festival' takes the paayasam, but I'm wondering which I'd choose for second place. I feel rather fond of people going around the house in a frenzy of passion, scattering flowers and spilling oil in the wake of vacuum cleaners.

What do you think?

4 comments:

dipali said...

I'm wondering what has happened to the editors of The Hindu, a paper that I'm rather fond of, at least when it isn't publishing such brilliance!
Happy Diwali- may you passionately enjoy this most pompous festival:)

Space Bar said...

They must be on Diwali vacation. I actually was about to malign The Deccan Chronicle - which is more likely to write stuff like this - but I've discovered that The Hindu is full of stuff like this.

Falstaff said...

Hmmm...I think I'll plump for the image of a household of zombies all walking around with diyas in their hands going "Must....worship...female...deity"

Though I have to complement Ms. Reddy on her response - what a great way to tell your students "bring me a box of sweets for Diwali, or else".

And then, of course, there's seasame seeds.

Space Bar said...

Falstaff, yes. They should tadka the sesame seeds in hot oil and barbecue themselves. who needs babies, right?