Chapter 18: Diwali

Diwali came to Prabhat Road the way it came every year: with noise and light and the particular chaos of a festival that Pune took personally, the city treating the festival of lights not as a celebration but as a campaign, every household competing with every other household in an unspoken war of illumination where the weapons were diyas and fairy lights and the nuclear option was a rangoli so elaborate that passing auto-rickshaw drivers slowed down to photograph it.

Gauri had always made the rangoli. For forty-three years — forty-three Diwalis on Prabhat Road — she had made it. The rangoli was her signature, her annual statement, the thing she produced on the morning of Diwali with coloured powder and a steady hand and the particular artistic precision of a woman who understood that rangoli was not decoration but communication: the patterns said welcome, the colours said prosperity, the symmetry said: this household is in order.

This year, the rangoli was different.

Not in design — the design was the same, the traditional Maharashtrian rangoli, the lotus at the centre, the border of swastikas (the original swastikas, the auspicious Hindu ones, the ones that had existed for three thousand years before the other history claimed them), the dots of colour placed with the tip of a cone, each dot the size of a thumbnail, each dot evidence of the particular patience that rangoli requires and that Gauri possessed in quantities that were, even by Maharashtrian rangoli standards, excessive.

The difference was: she was not alone.

Ketaki was there. On her knees, on the front porch, with a cone of red powder and the concentrated expression of a woman who was learning a new skill and who was applying to the learning the same intensity she applied to onion-cutting: total focus, zero tolerance for error, the particular perfectionism of a person who has learned that doing things well is the only control available.

"The dots need to be even," Gauri said.

"The dots are even."

"The dots are approximately even. Approximately is not the same as even. Look at mine." She pointed to her section — the section where the dots were not approximately even but mathematically even, each one equidistant from the next, the spacing so precise that it looked machine-made, which was the highest compliment in the rangoli world: to look machine-made while being hand-made.

"Your dots have been practicing for forty-three years," Ketaki said. "My dots are two hours old. Give them time."

"Time does not improve dots. Practice improves dots. And practice requires feedback. And the feedback is: your dots are too big."

"Big dots are a stylistic choice."

"Big dots are an error. Small dots are rangoli. Big dots are — big dots are what happens when you squeeze the cone too hard."

"I'm not squeezing too hard."

"You're squeezing like you're strangling the cone. Ease up. The cone is your friend. The cone is not an onion."

Nandini arrived at nine. She arrived with a steel container — the container that meant Nandini had cooked, the container that was, in the Patwardhan household's emotional vocabulary, the equivalent of a love letter, because Nandini's cooking was love made edible and the edible love was always in a steel container and the steel container was always carried with two hands because the love was heavy.

"Karanji," Nandini announced, placing the container on the table with the authority of a woman delivering a national treasure. "Forty pieces. The outer shell is my mother's recipe. The filling is Farhan's mother's recipe. The combination is — the combination is the marriage of two culinary traditions that should never have met and that, having met, produced something better than either tradition could have produced alone."

"Cultural fusion karanji," Gauri said.

"Don't call it that. Calling it that makes it sound like a food blog. It's karanji. Made with love and two recipes and the understanding that Diwali is not about tradition, it's about feeding people until they can't move."

The house filled. This was the Diwali phenomenon — the filling. The house that was, on ordinary days, a house for two people and a dog became, on Diwali, a house for everyone. Meera arrived from Mumbai with Sanjay and the twins (the twins, nine, who immediately located Moti and began the particular torture that children inflict on patient dogs: the dressing-up, the carrying, the insistence on treating a dachshund mix as a baby). Rohit arrived from Bangalore, alone (the aloneness was a choice, the choice of a man who was processing and who needed to process without the additional variable of a partner who would need the processing explained). Sunil called from London — the video call, the particular Diwali of the diaspora, the celebration conducted through a screen, the face pixelated, the firecrackers heard through a phone speaker, the particular sadness and determination of a child who is eight hours behind and who is trying to be present from a flat in Brixton.

And Arun. Arun was everywhere — not in the managing way, not in the fixing way, but in the being way. The being that he had learned. The being that was: carry the chairs, serve the chai, light the diyas, be the man in the house who was present, who was here, who was not sleeping through.

The evening came with the light — the particular light of Diwali evening, when the diyas are lit and the fairy lights are turned on and the rangoli glows in the combined illumination of a thousand small flames and the electric lights and the particular ambient light of a city that is simultaneously burning and beautiful.

Gauri lit the first diya. This was tradition — the woman of the house lights the first diya, the first flame, the flame that begins the festival, the flame that says: the dark is being addressed. Not eliminated — addressed. The dark will return. The dark always returns. But tonight, the dark is being addressed with light and oil and cotton wicks and the particular faith that lighting a small flame in a large darkness is not futile but essential.

She held the match. The match was — her hand was steady. The steadiness was — Gauri noticed it, the way you notice the absence of a thing that has been present for so long that its presence was the norm and its absence is the event. Her hand was steady. Not the trained steadiness, not the performed steadiness, not the steadiness of a woman who has learned to control the trembling. The hand was steady because the hand was not afraid. Because this moment — this Diwali, this house, this family (broken and remaking, the pieces not back together but rearranging, the arrangement new and uncertain but real) — this moment was not the performance. This moment was the thing.

She lit the diya. The flame caught. The wick drew the oil and the oil fed the flame and the flame lit the porch and the porch lit the rangoli and the rangoli — the rangoli that she and Ketaki had made, the combined rangoli, the forty-three-year dots and the two-hour dots, the precise and the approximate — the rangoli glowed.

"It's beautiful," Ketaki said. Standing on the porch. In the borrowed saree — Gauri's saree, the green cotton, the kitchen saree repurposed for Diwali because Ketaki did not own a saree and Gauri had said: "You're wearing mine, no arguments, the green suits you, and if it gets powder on it, good, powder on a saree is the evidence of a Diwali lived."

"The dots are too big," Gauri said.

"The dots are fine."

"The dots are — yes. The dots are fine."

The concession was — Gauri giving it, and Ketaki receiving it, and the exchange being the friendship in miniature: the sixty-eight-year-old woman who was learning to let things be imperfect and the twenty-four-year-old woman who was learning that imperfection was not failure but the evidence of having tried.

*

The puja was at eight. Nandini led it — not because Nandini was the most devout (Nandini's relationship with religion was the relationship of a woman who attended temples for the architecture and who prayed for the community and who believed in God the way she believed in the postal system: intermittently and with the understanding that the system was flawed but occasionally delivered) — but because Nandini's voice was the strongest, and Diwali puja required a strong voice, the kind of voice that could carry the aarti over the sound of firecrackers and the twins' shrieking and the particular sonic chaos of Prabhat Road on Diwali evening.

The aarti was sung. The voices — Gauri's, Nandini's, Meera's, Ketaki's, Arun's (off-key, committed, the voice of a man who cannot sing but who sings anyway because singing is presence and presence is the thing), Rohit's (quiet, standing at the back, the son who was processing and whose processing included being here, which was enough), the twins' (enthusiastic, wrong words, the particular musical contribution of nine-year-olds who know the tune but not the lyrics and who compensate with volume) — the voices filled the room and then the house and then, through the open windows, the lane.

Gauri held the aarti plate. The brass plate with the diya, the flame dancing, the flower petals, the vermilion. She held it and she circled it — the clockwise motion, the ancient gesture, the prayer that was not words but movement, the body's way of saying: I offer this light to the divine. I offer this light to the people in this room. I offer this light to the dark, not to destroy the dark but to acknowledge it, to say: the dark exists and the light exists and tonight the light is what we choose.

She circled the plate in front of each person. Arun (who bowed, the bow of a man who was learning to receive). Nandini (who closed her eyes, the closing that was not religious but emotional, the particular reverence of a woman who had been the bridge and who was, tonight, part of the structure). Ketaki (who stood still, who did not know the protocol, who received the blessing the way she received everything: with the alertness of a woman who was learning that blessings existed and that she was permitted to receive them). Meera (who cried, silently, the tears that were not grief but the particular tears that Diwali produces in the children of complicated families: the tears of being home, of the home being different, of the difference being painful and necessary and, somehow, beautiful). The twins (who were trying to pet Moti while simultaneously receiving the blessing, the multitasking of nine-year-olds who believe that all activities can be concurrent).

After the puja, the food.

The food was — the food was Diwali. The karanji (Nandini's fusion creation, the shell crisp, the filling sweet, the combination that had no right to work and that worked spectacularly). The puran poli (Gauri's, of course, the recipe that had been made on this day for forty-three years and that was, this year, made not from performance but from — from something else, from the particular joy of cooking when the cooking is chosen and not compelled). The shankarpali (Meera's contribution, made in Mumbai, transported on the train, the diamond-shaped fried-dough that was the Diwali snack of every Maharashtrian childhood and that tasted, regardless of who made it, like the specific memory of being young and being given something sweet by someone who loved you). The chakli (Arun's attempt — his first, his brave, terrible first, the spiral snack that was supposed to be crisp and symmetrical and that emerged from the oil looking like a geometric accident, the shape wrong, the crispness uneven, but the making — the making was the point, and Ketaki ate three and pronounced them "architecturally distinctive," which was the kindest possible description).

The family ate. The broken family. The family that had been split by a WhatsApp message and that was, tonight, in this house, on this Diwali, not reassembled but — present. The pieces were present. Not all the pieces — Laxman was not there (would never be there again, the absence permanent, the permanent absence being the consequence and the cost and the freedom). Manda Tai was not there (the non-believing aunt, whose absence was her position, a position delivered in the Indian way: not by saying "I'm not coming" but by simply not coming, the absence being the statement). Vikram was not there. Pramod was not there — Pramod was in Kothrud, with Padma (who had returned, who had come back to the house after two weeks at her sister's, who had come back not because the coming-back erased the cotton but because forty-eight years of marriage produces its own gravity, the gravity that pulls you back even when the pulling is uncomfortable, and Padma had decided that the pulling was worth more than the pushing, and the decision was hers).

But the pieces that were present were — the pieces were enough. Gauri. Arun. Meera and Sanjay and the twins. Rohit. Sunil on the screen from London. Nandini. Ketaki. Moti.

Enough was not complete. Enough was not the family as it had been. Enough was the family as it was: real, imperfect, present.

After the food, after the firecrackers (the twins, supervised by Rohit, the particular nervousness of a man who was in charge of children and gunpowder and who approached the combination with the same caution he applied to investment portfolios), after the cleaning, after the guests — Nandini and Ketaki and Meera and Sanjay and the twins — had gone, and Sunil's face had pixelated into goodbye, and Rohit had gone to his room — after all of that, Gauri stood on the porch.

The diyas were burning down. The rangoli was scuffed — the twins' footprints, the evidence of small feet on coloured powder, the particular destruction that children bring to beautiful things and that is, somehow, the most beautiful thing about the beautiful things: that they were used. That the rangoli was walked on. That the diyas were burning down. That the evening was ending.

Arun came out. Stood next to her. Did not speak. The not-speaking was the gift — the gift of a man who had learned that sometimes the best thing to say is nothing, and the nothing is everything, and the everything is: I am here.

Moti was at her feet. The dog who was always at her feet. The five kilos that were the constant, the anchor, the thing that did not change when everything else changed.

"Good Diwali," Gauri said.

"Good Diwali," Arun said.

The diyas burned. The rangoli glowed. The lane was quiet — the firecrackers dying down, the city settling, the festival releasing its grip on the evening and letting the night take over.

Good Diwali. The two words that contained: we are here. We are different. We are broken and remaking. The light was lit and the dark was addressed and the family was present and the present was enough.

The wolf would come at three AM. Gauri knew this. The wolf always came, even on Diwali, even on the night of lights. But tonight — tonight the three-AM kitchen would have two tumblers. Tonight the aloneness was over. Tonight the dark was addressed.

And the addressing was the thing.