Diye jalthe he..

Deepawali, as I have mentioned several times (:-D) is my favourite festival of the lot. Its been 3 years since I last saw Deepawali at its original and its best. Its been 3 years and I still miss the festive atmosphere, the cracker sounds and smells. This time though I didn't miss mom's cooking ;-). I got to eat her hand-made ereyappas after 3 long years. But I still missed celebrating it in India. The feeling was multiplied by the fact that mom was also missing the Deepawali atmosphere of Bangalore. Last weekend, we did get to see some cracker-bursting what with us attending the get-together at the local temple. But well, nothing is enough for a Bangalore gal ;-).

Anyways, we did the usual neeru-tumbsodu and water heater pooje. On thursday i.e Naraka Chaturdashi, mom did the traditional enneshaastra to Sri and me, after which we did enne-snaana. Since it was a thursday, Sri had to go to office. Well, so we practically did nothing till the evening.

Evening, we dressed up, lit lamps, while mom made the sweet and khara ereyappas. They came out wayyyyyy better than mine (as you can expect :-D).




Sri and I also hung up the decorative lights we had bought earlier outside and placed the lamps on the ground..




Just in case you are not able to make out, the small lights on the ground are the diyas :-p. Since we had dressed up, we obviously took photos (the "we" here refers to me and mom, Sri was in his regular clothes :-D).




Yesterday was Lakshmi pooja. Evening we lit lamps, sung Lakshmi shobhaane and did the pooja. Today evening we lit lamps again, sang some bhajans and conducted the Balindra pooja for Bali Padyami (mom made avalakki panchakajjaya for the occasion). And so our Deepawali is done for the year. Hope you had a wonderful Deepawali too :).