Festivals in India

Heart aflutter, like a student anxiously scrutinizing the notice board for examination results, I made the customary call to my mother in Madras one week before Deepavali.  Between them -  she and my dear father - they sift through a dozen almanacs, consult a couple of spiritual gurus, talk to a bunch of relatives (who are completely retired, yet stressed out due to overwork involving such critical issues) and also strain their well-calibrated antennae to trap information floating in the ether - all in an effort to fix the exact date on which our family is to celebrate Deepavali.  So, invariably this is what transpires.  My dear wife, going by the very straightforward announcement by the government that 12th November is the holiday for the festival, organizes the mornings and evenings for a few days to the T, well in advance. Then her mother calls and tells her that the Mangalorean Deepavali is on the 13th, no questions asked and the commotion begins.  Neighbours who are true blue Bangaloreans (please observe how that one letter at the beginning changes things drastically!) vociferously advertise their intent to celebrate on the 11th because, well, their mothers told them that IS the day. Finally our matriarch imperially decrees over phone that we should unequivocally uphold our Iyengar heritage by doing the honours on the 14th morning between 4 am and 7 am.   An ancient uncle, a rabid Vaishnavite offering extreme advice on such matters gratis, calls and categorically tells us that we should diligently avert all traps set by the scheming Iyers, who want to celebrate on the previous day; as if he is marshaling troops to out-manoeuvre the enemy in battle.

The whole scheme of Deepavali in India is so dynamic and varied that once, when I called a friend in Mysore to wish him, instead of being cheerful and pleasant - true to the spirit of the festival - he barked at me on his cell phone and told me to buzz off; the angst was not my doing, but caused by the fact that his organization had decided to declare Deepavali holiday two days later, depriving him of the joy of being with his larger family and friends on that day.  So I learnt that it pays to be sensitive to regional differences in these matters and send email messages out instead of calling to greet.  To confound the confusion, celebrations are in the morning in some parts of South India (other parts seem to have rebelled sometime earlier and broken away from that tradition, because my wife swears that in Mangalore it has always been in the evening), while the North and West deliberately get out of bed a few hours late on that day, to make a point.  We really don't know whether they celebrate anything except Durga Pooja in the East-- blessed people.  May be they can add Mamata Pooja from next year??  That would be unique and noone else in India would probably want to celebrate that.

Similar confusion reigns in the case of many other festivals in India, since mothers, uncles and pandits (am not specifically mentioning fathers because they are, by default, folded into `mothers' as is well-known) are at this game all the time.   Take Janmashtami or Krishna Jayanthi, God Krishna's birthday, for instance.  Going by the Hindu calendar and knowing Krishna's birth star, the day could come only once a year, one would think.  But, people are simply averse to any unanimity regarding that one day to celebrate.  When I was a student, once I essayed into a rational exercise with all the elders ganging up to protect their turf, to find out why our neighbours were celebrating Krishna's birthday one day before we did - you guessed it, they were Iyers.  As is inevitable in these fuzzy matters, when they realised there was no way their distilled wisdom was going to be adequate to win the day, the conversation abruptly ended with my grandfather sternly declaring in that special tone which brooked no further argument and indicated an immediate shutdown of democratic debate, that I was too young to comprehend such weighty issues.  I am sure similar problems exist with the birthdays of whole host of gods in the Hindu pantheon, like Subramanya, Ganesha and Rama.  Perhaps Shiva and Dasaratha, as devoted parents, deliberately misrepresented birthdates of their progeny, to persuade the rishis at the time of their intake into the gurukul!  Thereby creating multiple birthdates for their wards?  And perhaps, that was the genesis of the subsequently prevalent practice of parents initiating their children into school with a lie - a modified date of birth for convenience!

If we have such difficulty in having a uniform date for festivals, is it surprising that the lore, mythological and otherwise, attached to a festival like Deepavali, is also different in regions?  I grew up in the South, listening to the story of Narakasura, a rampaging demon being killed on that day by God Krishna and the latter enjoining the populace to celebrate the day as Deepavali, with rows of brightly lit lamps.  When I moved to Delhi, I realised that Diwali was being celebrated there to commemorate the return of God Rama from his arduous life in the forest for 14 years, after overcoming the evil Ravana.  With the change in the spelling, the underlying reason also shifted - tectonically by a whole yuga, from Dwapara to Treta! The saving grace is just that both the interpretations stress that the celebration is for the demolition of evil forces by the good ones.  Thank
God that good sense has so far prevailed to retain that overarching reason.  Similarly, the story behind Dussehra also differs from region to region.  Generally the festival glorifies Goddess Durga, who annihilated evil in the form of Mahishasura and in the East, this theme prevails.  In the North, God Rama again makes his presence felt by getting the nine days celebrated as Ramlila.  In the South, contemporary Dussehra has become more social and cultural, with the religious significance receding a bit.  Of course, most of the Hindu gods find their place in the Kolu in miniature form.

Look at the western world's calendar for festivals; they have set dates for Chistmas, Thanksgiving and Halloween.  There has been no attempt by any faction to celebrate these festivals on other days for whatever reason, I presume.  Provides for simplicity and takes out the confusion factor completely.

Do I sound like I would prefer a uniform date for our festivals also?   Nice, but I think that would be too pat for India.  We do enjoy and thrive on the confusion caused by such inconsistencies in life.  No, I would stick with what we have and be buffeted by the unpredictable variations that come along with the festivals.  They augment the fun.  And, I definitely do not want to miss calling my mother to find out when Deepavali arrives at our home - there is some thrill in that.  And remember the mothers, pandits and uncles - they have something exciting to do for a fortnight and I would hate to deprive them of that fun.