Sandhya Acharya shares about her love for the holiday season.
One November evening, I looked around with the somber realization that Navratri was over, and so was Diwali. The yellow plastic garlands we strung up in my kitchen needed to come down. The saris and ghagras I sashayed in, needed to be folded away. And the string lights outside my door had to be turned off.
Outside, nature, too, was packing up. Green leaves were turning crimson, and soon the branches would be bare. As an immigrant Hindu family from India, I grew up always looking forward to yet another festival around the corner. My childhood was spent in cosmopolitan Mumbai, steeped in a hodgepodge of multiple cultures from across India. Our holidays were all about celebrating one festival or another.
We went pandal-hopping during Ganpati Visarjan, stayed awake for Dandia Nights, burst fireworks with our neighbors for Diwali, and so on. It felt like the festivities never ended. When I first came to the U.S, I missed the revelry, the color, the noise. Over the years, though, new routines, new rituals formed.
During spring and summer, our holidays became more about enjoying the wonderful outdoors and the many national parks around the country, and in the winter, we discovered skiing. As my network grew, so did the parties. I took stock of recent years. I had gone haldi-kumkum hopping at friends’ houses, gotten dressed for Bharat Natyam dance performances at temples around the Bay Area, celebrated multicultural night with the school, cheered together for basketball, football, wrestling matches, met neighbors at our now-regular block parties.