My "homemade" Diwali from C wing

I grew up in a home where homemade Diwali mithais were a ritual. Diwali holidays brought with it the fragrance of besan ke ladoo and ghevar that sat in various steel dabbas eating up every corner of our kitchen. Dabbas that took days to fill but vanished in minutes into various homes in our neighbourhood.

Days of pre-planning lead to a wide array of homemade sweets, handmade diyas along with a few handcrafted decorations by us children of the house.

I fondly remember those pre-diwali prep days that brought in the festive spirit way before the actual festival arrived. Three weeks of pre-planning, shopping, and putting together all the fun and festivities. While the digital age has shrunk all the time and effort needed, it has also shrunk the festive feeling from 3 weeks to just 3 days. Back in the day the family made time to head out and buy lights or source various items and ingredients from street to street over multiple days. Now we do the same with the click of a button, between busy meetings and chaotic schedules. The houses that once carried the whiff of crushed dry fruits mixed with jaggery, waiting to turn into ladoos, has been replaced by the smell of amazon cartons. While I’m fondly reminded of all the fun and excitement of the prep days leading up to Diwali, today I struggle to recreate it in my own home. Even though I have a husband who adores Indian sweets and a child that loves anything with sugar in it, I fail to find the time or enthusiasm to dish out these hand-crafted miracles on a plate. The normal me would feel extremely guilty (like most women, it’s my default setting) however on this one I go easy on myself for a change. I remind myself that I am not one such woman who seeks validation from how well her family is fed. For women like me, the kitchen isn’t our happy place and we don’t even pretend to try. Unlike our mothers who were primarily the CEO of our homes, women today proudly have their fingers in multiple pies. And while we are busy juggling these multiple portfolios between home and work, we also like to keep the good old traditions alive. So, we resort to the good old Indian “juggad” for these homemade goodies to make their way into our homes and the tummies of our loved ones.

My solution is this 60-year-old punjabi aunty in C Wing of my apartment complex. Her sweets are high on taste, made with the best ingredients and have enough and more of the “mummy ka pyaar” thrown in. So, we have ourselves a win win situation. At one end we have a woman who loves to make them and on the other end we have me, who loves to source it from the person who’s doing it right.

The same goes for my handmade kandils and diyas. I have effortlessly moved from hand painting them myself in my youth, to now buying them from this lady who runs an NGO for the under-privileged.?

So, with some effort and an eye for sourcing various hand-crafted items from reliable corners of town, I once again manage to recreate my childhood “handmade” Diwali. And once again my home has the flavour of the Diwali I grew up knowing, just not the one that is the solo effort of the lady of the house. And while I am a person who chooses to keep the good old traditions alive, I have no shame in accepting that mine comes together with some help from the community of women I’m surrounded by.

In my case, my sweet spot is the C wing punjabi aunty.

An expression for "SheMatters" by Shweta Iyer