Tania'sDiwaliCelebration

ByKanikaG

Copyright2014byKanikaG

Website:

https://sites.google.com/site/kanikagebooks/

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Tania Celebrates Diwali

Tania was really excited. The last dayof school was finally over. Tania'sDiwali vacation had begun. Diwali wasstill a few days away. But there was alot of preparation to do. Diwali is theIndian festival of lights. It iscelebrated with sweets, lights,decorations, games and firecrackers.Tania was now old enough to enjoy it alland she had been looking forward to itfor a while.

Mama had planned some fun activities forTania. First on the agenda was todecorate diyas. Tania asked "Mama, whatis a diya?"

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Mama said "A diya is an oil lamp made ofclay. We pour oil into the clay bowl andmake a wick from cotton. When we lightthe oil soaked cotton, the flame lightsup the area around. It is very pretty.The clay lamps are plain and brown, sowe are going to paint them."

Mama and Tania sat on a large plasticmat on the living room floor and

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decorated the lamps with variousdesigns. They used a lot of the flashysilver and gold colours which wouldshine beautifully in the lamp light.

Diwali week is the time to do some housecleaning and decorating. Tania and mama

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spent a morning cleaning up andarranging cupboards and drawers. So inthe afternoon they decided it was timefor some fun. Mama told Tania they wouldbe making a "Rangoli". She saw Tania'scurious, puzzled expression andexplained, "A Rangoli is a design madeon doorsteps as a welcome sign. We aregoing to use rice flour to make it."Mama took some rice and put it in thegrinder. Tania pressed the button andmade rice flour. Then mama and Taniatook the rice flour to the doorstep."Now what do we do mama?" asked Tania.

Mama said, "Sprinkle the rice powder tomake some nice design like this flowerhere."

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Mama also used a little bit of somecoloured powders she had bought. Taniaand mama had an enjoyable afternoonmaking a lovely floral Rangoli.

But enough about decorating. Diwaliwould not be complete without tastyIndian sweets. Mama had bought some dry-fruit sweets from the sweet shop.

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But mama always made gulab jamuns athome. Tania helped mama make a doughconsisting of milk powder, flour, bakingpowder and cream. They then made littleround balls of dough the size of marblesand deep fried them till they weregolden brown. Mama also made a sugarsyrup flavoured with rose water. Oncethe fried balls of dough cooled alittle, mama and Tania put them in thesyrup to soak.

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Soon it was the night before Diwali.Diwali is on the night of the new moon,so the night before Diwali is thedarkest night of the month. It isbelieved that the ghosts and spiritsprowl the earth on that night. So insome parts of India it is customary tolight 14 diyas and place them all overthe house to ward off the ghosts. Taniaand mama lit their beautifully decorateddiyas and placed them all over the

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house.

On Diwali morning Tania woke up early.Grandma and grandpa were coming in theafternoon. Mama made a snack of "pani-puri" and "dahi-puri" for everyone.Tania helped set up the table with thepuris, curd, mashed potatoes, tamarindchutney and of course the super tasty"pani": water flavoured with cumin, rocksalt and mint coriander chutney.

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Grandma and grandpa arrived around 2:00.Traditionally the family spent Diwaliafternoon playing cards. But to includelittle Tania, this Diwali they played"Uno". Instead of the usual betting thevictor got to collect a certain amountof candy from the rest at the end ofeach game. Tania thoroughly enjoyedherself. She was an expert at Uno and

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collected a good amount of candy.Everyone chatted and ate pani-puri whileplaying Uno. This was Tania's first timeeating pani-puri and she found it to bea messy and enjoyable experience. Theyalso ate gulab jamuns and other sweets.

The afternoon passed by quickly witheveryone having such a good time. Soonthe sun had set and it was time for firecrackers. This was what Tania had been

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looking forward to most of all. Thehousing society had set aside some spacefor the children to safely lightcrackers.

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Tania lit sparklers, fountains and arotating ground fire cracker called azameen-chakra. Last year mama had onlylet her watch. It was so much more funto actually light the crackers.

That night Tania went to bed happy andtired. It was the best, most excitingday she had ever had.

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The photograph of the oil lamp withflame, was originally posted toFlickr.com, was uploaded to Commonsusing Flickr upload bot on 04:11, 1 June2008 (UTC) by Kelly (talk).

On that date it was licensed under thelicense in the link below.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

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