Happy Diwali!!

I once again would like to acknowledge the long break, but now that I’m back, I hope I’ll be able to make that bang!…. Blogging had created a big load of backup in my to do list and add to it, the festival season and this wonderful Fall season of 2010. Almost everyday, I was out either hiking or driving around to get pictures of this wonderful long fall that we are having this year.  Fall hasn’t been as brilliant in all my years of stay in the USA. All the same, I haven’t had a more hectic festival season as this year’s. But, it was as hectic as much as it was enjoyable.

I would like to wish all the readers, although belated but with the same warmth, a very happy and prosperous Diwali. May the coming year shower all of you with happiness and health and have all your desires fulfilled.

 

It had been years that we had such an active Diwali celebration. Mostly, it would have been getting together, praying, having food and a few games. But, this year’s celebration was a much more planned, coordinated, scripted and actively participated one. Of the many activities planned, we had a skit enacted by the kids, based on the epic of Ramayan. Of the million reason’s Diwali is celebrated in India, one of it is the return of Rama, Lakshmana and Sita to Ayodhya after rescuing Sita from Ravan.  So, one of our own mom, creatively scripted a simple play for the kids based on this epic, Ramayan!

The preparation for the kids skit was really something.  Taking hours of training

and practice. 

And we had a number of playdates for the kids after such practices.

and finally, their presentation, it was superb!.  Right, we had our own Ravan…who grew a mustache for the play!. Such was the dedication of the participants.

And his cute Rakshash Sena (Interesting thoughts presented in the link here)!

Our own Ram Parivar!

 

Our own Dasharath and Kaikeyi

And Shabari too !!              

We had Hanuman, Sugreeva and His Vanar Sena… 

There was also a beautiful narrator who filled in the information during the gaps.

And the confrontation and War with Ravan!!! 

All in all, the kids enacted the whole epic in 10+ minutes. The kids hadn’t been exposed to so much culture before. It was a learning experience clubbed with fun time with friends.

I clicked roughly about 2000 pictures or more spanning 6-8 weeks, from the preparation, rehearsals to the event itself.  Skimming through them was not an easy task. Gift of modern digital gizmos to amateurs like me…click as many as you can and pick that one snap. There’s atleast one picture that’s bound to be presentable.  If I didn’t get even a few decent shots…imagine what a dumb photographer I am. If it sounds like I didn’t have fun doing all this, I haven’t had this much fun using my camera in a long time. 

What’s Diwali without fireworks…right?! It was an evening of fireworks too…Just felt like being in India…sans the noise of the crackers. We had just kept to sparklers to preserve the peace of the night.

 

The climax of the evening was a skit by us ladies.We had spent late nights making the accessories for the kids play and practicing for our skit,  It was a surprise show and we did great! The husbands were surprised…TO practice for this show, we had met during the nights after everybody, the kids, the husbands had been fed and put to bed. Hats of to the working mom’s who made it to these late night practice sessions and kudos to the host and the creator whose energy, the more I would say , the less it feels

All in all, Diwali 2010 was a blast…

As the event was coming to an end our men there started to feel sad that we ladies will not have any more reason to meet each other every other night. Their remark…”What are u ladies going to do now..that all this is over?!!”

We’er going to find another reason!