Diwali Celebrations!

Diwali is one of the biggest holidays in India, and the kids at my schools celebrated it with lots of enthusiasm. The first celebration took place last Monday. Elementary school students were busy painting and decorating their diyas (oil lamps made from clay); some of the kids took me by the hand to proudly show off their handiwork. These diyas were then put on a few tables for sale during the food festival:

In the first half of the day, the teachers went about decorating the school. This was their end product:

Diwali is called the festival of lights, which is why lanterns are hung everywhere and diyas are lit in every corner (in this case paper lanterns were used and diyas weren’t lit, but nevertheless the symbolism exists).

For the food festival, students made all kinds of chaat, which is a term used to describe popular street food snacks. First, I had a samosa (fried pastry with savory filling such as potatoes and spices) broken into small chunks mixed with diced tomatoes, cilantro, sev (small pieces of crunchy noodles made from chickpea flour), plain yogurt, and two pieces of wrapped mango candy:

I had taken several bites of this snack before I realized that I should have taken a picture of it first for this blog. It tasted great because I like samosas and sev (any street snack with sev sprinkled on top tastes great to me).

After my samosa mix snack, I had pani puri (pani means ‘water’ in Hindi, although in this case you can see that the water is green from all the chilies in it, while puri is fried bread (nice and crispy).

There are variations on pani puri, and generally I love pani puri as long as the puri is crispy (I’ve had stale puri before and it’s not the same without the crunch). A hole is punched into the hollow puri with a finger so that potatoes, tomatoes, cilantro, sev, onions, chili, and masala can be stuffed in, then the pani (green liquid in this case) is poured into the hole. Each pani puri should be eaten in one bite (you can see four remaining here, which I ate in four bites). Since I have a relatively low tolerance for spice, I told the server not to add any chilies in my puris (there were already chilies in the liquid anyway).

Next, I had bhel puri (the school coordinator said that she would order it if I shared it with her):

This bhel puri was made out of puffed rice, sev, pomegranate seeds, cilantro, tamarind sauce, and lots of chili. I really liked the texture and flavor (sweet and tangy) of this snack, although I had to pause frequently because my mouth was on fire.

Last, I shared dahi sev batata puri with the school principal:

Dahi means ‘plain yogurt’ in Hindi and batata means ‘potato’ in Hindi. It is similar to pani puri except instead of spicy liquid, the puri is filled with plain yogurt. Dahi sev batata puri is also very good, especially for its mild sweetness. I didn’t touch the two mini cakes pictured on the bottom right side of the plate, and the green liquid at the far upper right corner was part of pani puri for the principal himself.

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The second school celebration I went to took place last Friday. I liked the arrangements of diyas on the ground at the entrance:

I watched the preschool and kindergarten teachers soak cotton balls in oil and place them inside the diyas:

I then watched the kindergarten teacher light up the diyas in front of her students:

There was a competition among the classes for the best Diwali decorations. A few are shown below:

All of the above are rangoli, which is an art pattern created on the floor using materials such as flower petals (first and third pictures), colored sand (I’m guessing for the second picture, I didn’t ask), dry flour, or colored rice.

The principal hired an outside group to make chaat:

In the picture above, there are mashed chickpeas (yellow) on the left, cilantro on the right, onions (pink) on the right, sev in the bag behind the cilantro, and puri in the bag behind the onions and the ginormous bag next to the server. I had about 10 pani puris from this guy. They were delicious.

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Since the Diwali celebrations for one of the schools and colleges took place on the same day, I could only attend the tail end of the festival at the college. I managed to see the fashion show finale:

I liked all the colors on display. There was food afterwards, but I was too full to eat anything. Overall it was a very entertaining day.

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It was a teacher’s birthday last week, so she brought in boondi ka ladoo:

Sometimes I find Indian sweets too sweet, but I really liked these because of their texture (soft and falls apart in the mouth). Boondi ka ladoos are made out of gram flour, cashews, saffron, sugar, milk, and cardamom.

Priam and I received some Diwali gifts:

The first box contained an assortment of dried fruits and nuts, while the second box contained an assortment of Indian sweets. The dried fruits and nuts had no added sugar or spice, and they tasted pretty standard. The sweets in the first, second, and fourth column tasted like cashews and mixed nuts. They were pretty good. The sweets in the fourth column had an edible silver foil coating, which doesn’t have any taste and is used mainly to be aesthetically pleasing. I did not like the sweets in the third column, which was made out of white chocolate and red jelly (too sweet for me). Overall, it was a very nice gesture on the givers’ part.