Let there be light

The Star

Indian national Arti Pandey shares how she and her family celebrate Deepavali at their home in Sri Manja, Selangor.  The Pandeys are part of the Hindu Brahmin community, a socio-ethnic group of people from North and Central, India.  WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:03 Deepavali is one of the major festivals for us.

00:07 When Deepavali comes in our mind,

00:09 we feel now the holidays is coming.

00:11 Now we go for chuti-chuti.

00:13 Some food, some nice happening, new clothes and all that.

00:16 And we can enjoy.

00:17 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:26 My hometown is there in Allahabad, which is Prayagraj now.

00:30 That is the place for the holy river Ganges.

00:33 Now Malaysia became our second home.

00:36 So we are celebrating here Diwali for 13 years.

00:38 I'm also from Allahabad, the place right now known

00:42 as Prayagraj.

00:44 It's the same, we say, Triveni Sangam, where the three

00:47 rivers are coming together.

00:49 One is Ganga, we say Ganga, Jamuna, and Saraswati.

00:55 We celebrate Diwali for five days.

00:57 And the first day is Dhanteras.

01:00 That day, we Indian or Hindus, we

01:02 go to buy some precious gemstone or buy gold.

01:06 And that day, we pray God Dhanvantari,

01:08 which is called the god of medicine.

01:10 And next day, we celebrate Narka Chaturdashi.

01:14 After that third day, the day of Deepavali,

01:16 we pray goddess Lakshmi, goddess of wealth.

01:19 Next day, we celebrate Govardhan Puja.

01:22 That day, actually, Lord Krishna was

01:25 holding the Govardhan Parvat for the whole day

01:27 and saving all the Gwalas and all that.

01:29 After that, when he put the Govardhan Parvat,

01:32 the mountain, down, then people, they all

01:34 were under that Parvat, mountain,

01:37 to stay away from the rain and God Indra.

01:41 And after that, the final day of Deepavali,

01:43 that is called Bhai Dhooj.

01:44 That day, the sisters will put a tika on brother's forehead,

01:49 and the brothers will give some gifts or money to the sister.

01:52 And we celebrate as the love of sibling, the brother

01:55 and sister's bonding.

01:56 Before Diwali, three days or four days before,

01:59 we start preparation for Deepavali.

02:02 We start buying all this stuff for decorations.

02:05 Related to some cultural foods and some ceremonies

02:10 or some rituals, we try to gather all these prayers items.

02:15 Morning of Diwali, normally what we do is not oil bath.

02:18 We say in the North culture, we don't go for oil bath.

02:21 To make ourselves clean and everything,

02:23 we try to use some Ganga Jal from the river Ganga.

02:26 We bring some Ganga Jal.

02:27 We keep it here.

02:28 And then whole day, we will do the normal prayers.

02:31 Our prayers, the Lakshmi Puja, we do in the evening

02:34 because we believe that Goddess Lakshmi just

02:36 go to people's house in the nighttime.

02:38 So we pray in the nighttime, and we keep our door open that day.

02:42 We light the lamps, and we show the way to our house

02:45 so Goddess Lakshmi can come with wealth and prosperity

02:48 to our house.

02:49 So that day, we cook all--

02:51 we would like to cook how many dishes we can cook.

02:55 So we do puri.

02:56 We make some paneer sabji.

02:58 We would like to have some dessert, mitai, sweets, kheer.

03:02 The real food, we should prepare approx 56 kind of foods.

03:07 That's called chappan bhog.

03:08 So for Krishna, we offer chappan bhog.

03:11 So we have chappan variety, 56 variety of food.

03:14 It's a big thali.

03:16 Here, we are not able to do that, but yes.

03:19 What we are trying to combine it,

03:20 that OK, some rice, some puris, some two,

03:24 three kind of sabjis, vegetables, and all that.

03:28 If we compare the celebration at my hometown

03:31 with my parents, with my siblings,

03:32 with my all other family members,

03:35 it gives a different kind of happiness.

03:37 Basically, it's a togetherness.

03:39 And if we talk about some traditional foods,

03:41 like suran is something like--

03:44 Elephant, yeah.

03:45 That we are not able to find it here easily.

03:47 [MUSIC PLAYING]

03:51 It was quite lonely for the first time

04:05 when we celebrated here, because that time we were not

04:08 aware of the market, all the places.

04:10 We were very new.

04:11 So it was just like alone we were celebrating.

04:13 Later, we get to know some friends.

04:15 So after that, after one or two years, it was OK.

04:18 Otherwise, in the beginning, I just

04:19 wanted to go back to India to celebrate any festival.

04:22 When I came here, I had murukku at my friend's place,

04:25 and I started liking.

04:27 So now, murukku is one of my snack item there on Deepavali.

04:31 Yeah, a bit Malaysian culture is in our Deepavali festival now.

04:35 So a few things we, like Malaysians, do,

04:37 Satu Malaysia, we also call Malaysian, local Tamils,

04:40 and our friends.

04:41 So we celebrate it here.

04:43 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:46 Happy Deepavali from us to you all.

04:51 And we call it Shubh Deepavali.

04:53 So [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

04:56 Happy Diwali.

04:57 Happy Diwali.

04:59 [MUSIC PLAYING]

05:02 [NO AUDIO]

05:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended