Whilst VCSL was preparing to celebrate Diwali 2008 in Croydon, Surrey, our ex-Secretary Jyotiben Ramesh Bharkhada flew to India to join her husband, our present Treasurer, in celebrating Diwali, Indian-Style: more traditional and in exciting manner. Rameshbhai who is in Jameshedpur for his office work writes from there:

“Jamshedpur is a small town in Jharkhand with a population of around 2 million people, predominately dominated by Bihari’s. The main festive event celebrated in this part is Durga Puja. However with lots of Gujarati families settled here, Diwali is still celebrated in a customary manner.”

He informed us that it has been forty years since he last celebrated Diwali in India. To him, therefore, this was going to be special, particularly as his wife, Jyotiben, was present in Jamshedpur.

He writes, “The day began with a puja in the morning and depending upon availability of pujari, this puja can go into night time. We were lucky that we had company of Rajesh Goyal and his family to share this auspicious day. The norm here is that the puja is done at their shop with all family members present and followed by fireworks outside their shop. The streets were crowed with people dressed in rich fabric and ornamental. The children were happily lighting small bombs. But real show begins around 7 O’clock in the evening. This is when your ear plugs become handy because they like to light up booms and they are loads and I mean loads. I felt sorry for all those motorcyclists because you never know how close next boom was going to be to them.”

There was excitement in Rameshbhai’s tone when he described how everyone was enjoying the fireworks in each and every street. Women and children all dressed up and wondering around in the town without any fear - greeting, hugging and offering sweets to each other.