“It’s a week-long Hindu festival that celebrates good over evil, light over darkness and it is where families come together and be merry. During the week, we light up our homes with candles and lights and decorate them with artwork made with brightly coloured powders and decorations, called rangoli.
“On the fourth day of the festival, it’s our new year so we dress up in new clothes, meet up with family and friends, exchange presents, and eat a lot of food. It is my favourite day of the festival as I love dressing up in my new outfits.
“During this time, I go to the many temples in Bolton and the surrounding area where I meet up with other members of the Hindu community and celebrate together. The best bits about this for me are seeing the temples beautifully decorated and seeing how the offering of food to our gods is displayed. It’s interesting to see the fusion of foods changing over the years to include different cultures; there are burgers, noodles, pizza, and cakes alongside traditional Gujarati foods – it’s amazing and so beautiful.”
Sheela shares with us five facts about Diwali that we may not know:
- Diwali and our calendar are based on the moon cycle, and usually fall between Sept and November; this year there are five days of celebrations, ending on Sunday 3rd November.
- The Indian calendar is now at 2081 and will be 2082 in November – The Gregorian calendar (used in most parts of the world) is based on the earth’s revolution of the sun, while the Hindu calendar is based on the motion of the moon revolving earth.
- This year Diwali and Halloween fall on the same day. I have a real dilemma, do I decorate the house with pumpkins, spiders and skeletons or do I light up my house with colour and lights, maybe it will be a fusion of both.
- On the third day, if you are a business owner, this is the time that we submit business accounts to Laxmi the goddess of Prosperity and Wealth. There is a whole set of pujas (a Hindu worship ritual) just for this – but after again, there is food and celebrations for prosperity.
- Everyone is welcome to visit our temples at this time and when you leave, you are often offered prasad which is our holy food to either eat at the temple or take with you. In some temples, there are opportunities for you to buy food as food preparations to feed hundreds of people are made many months in advance.