I have not celebrated Diwali with my family for four years.
However, this year my housemate and I decided that we'll have a real Diwali although we are the only Hindus in the area that we live. So the night before, we cleaned the house and prepared the altar for prayers. We had rice flour so we decided to make a kolam. I bought food colouring from the supermarket and spent an hour preparing the colours. There was no yellow colour, so I used turmeric.
At 3 a.m., dressed in our coats and shivering in the cold, we did a kolam in front of our house. I do not know how a kolam is done, but as my friend is from TN, she was familiar with it and she drew it whilst I filled the spaces with coloured powder.
Then we came back in and called our respective homes. My family were feasting on a breakfast of thosai, chicken curry, mutton praetel
. First time in 15 years we had non-veg as amavasai fell two days later this year.
Diwali morning, we got up, had oil bath and then did our prayers at the altar, which we did up as well as we could. We also put our new clothes for blessing. Breakfast was thosai (made with Gita mix) and chilli chutney. It was fabulous.
We invited our friends over for dinner. We cooked sambar, veg, rasam, payasam, raita and had naan bread and rice. We put tealights all over the house and everyone was amazed. It was beautiful. We tied sarees and could not relax!!!
On Friday, both of us just collapsed in front of the telly!! We were too knackered.
The Diwali food finished only on Sunday.
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