LJWorld.com

Photo by Kevin Anderson

Geeta Tiwari displays diyas, lights used to celebrate the holiday of Diwali. The day also will be celebrated with food, gifts and firecrackers.

For the past 20 years, Anju Mishra has been introducing her Lawrence friends to a joyous festival celebrated by nearly a billion people.

Next Saturday, friends, family, Indians and non-Indians will gather at her Lawrence home and celebrate Diwali, “the festival of lights.”

They will light candles in terra cotta pots called diyas, eat Indian food, play cards and maybe even spend some time in puja, or prayer, at a Hindu altar in a special room in Mishra’s home. She can have anywhere from 30 to 100 people on any given Diwali.

“Everybody is welcome. I tell everybody, ‘You know anyone alone, then bring them out,’” Mishra says. “And that includes the community. It has nothing to do with whether they are Indians or non-Indians, frankly.”

Come next week, Indians around the world will celebrate a holiday that is hard to define. In basic terms it is a festival of lights celebrating the triumph of good over evil. But depending on if you are talking to a Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Buddhist or someone from another religious and cultural division, how and why Diwali is celebrated can vary greatly.

“It is a five-day festival that has different meanings all over India and to different religious communities in India,” says Robert Minor, professor of religious studies at Kansas University and a Hindu specialist. “It really depends who you speak with, what community they’re from, what part of India they’re from. ... It is sort of agreed that it is a five-day festival of lights ... and they’ll all say basically that it signifies the victory of good over evil.”

Even among Hindus, who make up 80 percent of the population of India, the holiday can be celebrated very differently. It all depends on the region, family and particular god or goddess a person chooses to recognize on the holiday, says Geeta Tiwari. Tiwari grew up in India and teaches the Hindi language at KU. She says her family was unusual in that it didn’t pay particular attention to the goddess Lakshmi, who, as the goddess of prosperity, is a very popular goddess to focus on during the holiday. Instead, Tawari’s family chose Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, music and the creative arts, as its focus.

“We have hundreds and hundreds of gods and goddesses, and people are very personal about it,” Tiwari says. “So you could have in one family five individuals, each of whom have a separate preference for a certain god or goddess.”

No matter who you pick, when or how you do it, most people celebrating Diwali will light diyas to invite the gods into their homes and set off firecrackers in beautiful displays.

“Especially in central and northern India, every house will be lit. Kind of like your Christmas lights, only these are individual terra cotta lights,” Tiwari says. “And you put them all around your house — you put them on your windowsills, you put them on your rooftops, you put them on every door, you put them on every window. It just looks so pretty.”

Diwali in America

Finding an American comparison to Diwali is nearly impossible without creating a patchwork as diverse as the people who celebrate the holiday to begin with, says Minor, who experienced the holiday in India firsthand in 1981.

“It’s very much a cultural and national holiday,” Minor says. “The closest thing we have to it — I don’t know how to answer that. Possibly a mixture between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I guess we consider Christmas as more of a cultural holiday than a religious holiday.”

Tiwari likens it to the excitement of Christmas morning mixed with the charity of the winter holidays, the national significance and gluttony of Thanksgiving and the celebratory light show of Independence Day.

For Indians living abroad, it can be difficult to duplicate that feeling, but it can be a good opportunity to share the joy of the holiday and the culture surrounding it with others.

Santosh Thakkar, president of the Cultural India Club at KU, celebrates the holiday twofold: He celebrates with the club, which has an annual party based around the holiday, and also in his own way, calling his family, exchanging gifts and, like Mishra, bringing a bit of the tradition to Lawrence.

“In the U.S., Diwali is an opportunity to wear traditional Indian clothes, and the celebration includes sharing of gifts and sweets with friends in town,” Thakkar says. “One of the additional ways I enjoy Diwali is by calling my family in India, greet them with good health and happiness, and share the experiences of our Diwali celebration in the United States. Gift-giving, making authentic Indian meals and delicacies and decorating the house particularly with lights is something we enjoy doing during Diwali.”

Thakkar has lived and studied in the United States for five years, and he admits that Diwali is one of the hardest times to be away from his loved ones in India.

“(The) family get-together is my favorite part of the celebration. This is an opportunity to meet friends and family at least once a year, if not more,” Thakkar says. “Most of the students from India miss their family all the more during Diwali celebrations.”

For Mishra, who has lived outside of India longer than she lived in it, it is hard to imagine Diwali any differently than how she celebrates it. She has adapted some of the traditions but kept them intact. For example, instead of stringing live, flaming diyas around the outside of her house, a fire code no-no in the States, she uses paper lanterns. Instead of shooting off fireworks, she gives the children sparklers saved from the Fourth of July. And while she may not have her extended family here, she’ll have 40 guests in her home who can share in the joy with her.

“It’s part of my identity,” she says. “And you know, (I want) not only to celebrate it, but celebrate it with people who I love and who love me.”