Diwali

It all started when a dog turned up for breakfast wearing a necklace.
"Yesterday is Day of the Dog." Announced Shamser between Microfinance meetings "And today is the Day of the Cow". Sure enough a steady chain of Nepali women carrying Tika and Roti (fried bread) made their way around to Kalis stall and blessed her with tika, slapped  flour on her sides and muttered reverent words. Kali took it a all in her stride munching thoughtfully on the roti and looking Ramro ( beautiful) in her marigold necklace's.

It is the end of Monsoon,  soon the rice harvest will be ready. Those in the village   that can afford it have been buying in rice for the past 4months and those that can't have been surviving on corn grown for the cows or growing hungry. We arrived a month ago into the festival Dashain, in the midst of animal slaughter. But now I realize that this is the only meat eaten for the year by most castes. Tara asked " why don't we have meat for Diwali?" The answer....simply..... They were all slaughtered at Dashga . Apart from one chicken delt to by Shamser s Father. The first evidence of which was a sack containing chicken feet that he delivered gingerly for the two Beyonces ( cats). The cats devowerd this rare bit of meat hungrily, a nice change from egg and Dahl baht.

Dawali is a four Day festival. After  Cow Day comes Shareloti day,  the day when Bimala arrived with a bowl full of milled rice  to make Shareloti.  " I no good to make Shareloti. Ama teach me. We go now get  wood. Right now! " Bimala does everything at top speed . washing clothes, shouting at Babu ( her 4 yr old ), fetching grass for the cow from the jungle climbing the neighbors orange tree with a bag in her teeth for the oranges. She is feisty and full of character and has the same ADD charm as the children that we teach at the school, full speed and noisily  yelling in our faces. This time I am tailing her up to Shamser Amas ( mothers) place to carry wood and when I arrive she is inspecting lengths of wood and turfing logs onto the road. " You carry this and this and this and this".

Shareloti is basically a rice flour donut. Freshly milled rice flour is mixed into a slurry with water and sugar and bicarbonate of soda and then poured in a circle into oil heated to  deep frying temperature by a roaring fire. All done on a open fire in an enclosed kitchen with no chimney. Actually there is a chimney built by a past volunteer. But Ama has put a teapot on top of the smoke outflow and it is cheerfully boiling , pouring steam into the  already smoke chocked room.

Lukey and Tara watch the process mesmerized. Bamila explains that they cannot have a Shareloti yet as the first ones have to be offered to God. Which sparks off and interesting conversation with Tara about who is God. Eventually we all agree that neither Tara nor Lukey are God and Baba ( Shamsers father ) arrives and starts to break Shareloti s into pieces praying reverently.

Full of Shareloti we become distracted by the other quirk of Diwali. Modern times meets tradition: this Diwali is also a 4 day football tournament with the neighboring village Besisahar. Our guest house is 30 meters from the football pitch\ school playing ground\ only flat spot in the village. Each near miss goal is accompanied by shrieking and clapping and Lukey throws himself into the spirit of the game by shrieking  and clapping too. Then he and  Tara quietly dissapear amongst  Nepali playmates while Daddy watches the game and I amuse myself watching the ball boys retrieve and recirculate the footballs that fly over the bank into the millet fields below. There is no marking s on the football field. If the ball hits the bank on one side or fly's over the edge on the other then it is out :-)

Shareloti day ends with dancing. The dancing is to the same song, a song about sisters and brothers and Shareloti because at Diwali sisters and brothers share gifts. And that evening we were visited by a group of children who belted out this song and we all danced and then gave some sweets and some money. Kinda like carol singing and Halloween and football chanting all rolled into one.

The next day was the most special day of Diwali. We made marigold flower mallas ( necklace's) and everyone got a tika and a necklace and a special treat of banana  Shareloti.  Tara placed q some Tika on Lukeys forehead and Lukey gave Tara a necklace. Very Sweet. We ate a massive meal of Dahl baht and  a taste of chicken at Ama and Papas place and then topped it off watching Gaunshaha beating Besisahar in the final game.