Happy Deepavali!

It’s Deepavali! I have stuffed myself with ghee-soaked sweets and delicacies dripping oil. I have also, after many years, exchanged sweets with the neighbours accompanied by my sister.

When I was young (very young), I loved going to my neighbours’ houses and being complimented on my brand-new Deepavali dress and making plans for the evening with my (also very young) friends. My sister was my present age then, and she hated it. I’m pretty sure I talked more than she did.

Fast forward to a year ago. My sister was studying for her CA exam, and I was appointed to do my Deepavali duty all alone. Intrepid and resigned, I took the tissue-paper covered tray and went around to the houses of people I’ve known my entire life.

I rang the door-bell, and when the auntie/uncle/neighbor-who-used-to-be-my-best-friend-but-now-acts-like-he-doesn’t-know-me opened the door, mumbled incoherently something which sounded like ’hbbi dvali’ and thrust the tray at them. “Come in and sit down, “ they invited, and I gingerly balanced myself at the end of the chair, looking wildly around for a means of escape. The door was open, of course, but my tray was here, and I was not leaving without it. Poor thing, it would feel so alone, and besides, I needed it to give the ‘bakshanam’ to other houses. The thought made me groan.

We sat in awkward silence most of the time, me jumping whenever someone addressed a question in my general direction. If you’ve ever made small talk with people you haven’t seen since the last festival, when you underwent the same torture, you’ll know the pattern of conversation by-heart. First, the mandatory, “I haven’t seen you in a long time!” to which you nod vigorously (it is true after all) and say, “Yeah.”

Next, the optional, “You have grown so tall!” to which you give a sickly smile and say, “Yeah.”

Third follows what might be unique to me. “So, you’re in ninth?” they say, randomly guessing. “No, eleventh,” or twelfth, as the case may be. It is a rule that nobody ever knows your real age or standard. They either guess below or above it by at least two years. When you reveal your actual class, they look surprised and say, “But you look so small! Do you eat at all? You have to get some meat on your bones!” to which you nod vigorously, give a sickly smile, and say, “Yeah.” If they ask you how college is like, it’s a sure bet their grand-daughter or niece, who is roughly your age, is studying in college, so if you know her name you can say, “And how is XXX enjoying college?” feeling mighty pleased at having brought out a sentence on your own, and praying fervently that her name isn’t actually XXY.

Now everyone looks astonished. “It speaks!” they’re saying to themselves, incredulously. “Who would’ve thought?”; And they are so lost in surprise, they forget to answer your question. Your resources are now taxed to the limit, and besides wondering if that blasted tray (for which you are courageously risking life and limb) will ever come back, and frantically trying to think of topics for conversation, you also remember that you have to repeat this all over again, in the next house, the owner whom you don’t even know all that well and whose watchman once

turned up ugly over a ball that sailed into his compound.

At the end of this whole rigmarole, when you are mustering up the courage to say those words, “All right, I’m leaving now and coming back,” (A literal translation from Tamil, and quite untruthful and insincere), the auntie finally comes through with the tray. You accept it with relief, and make good your escape, trying your utmost not to seem in a hurry to get away. When the door closes behind you though, you scamper, still not knowing if it was XXX or XXY, and dammit, does she enjoy college or not?

This would be a good way to end, but this year my sister, in a cushy job with lots to talk about – it’s distance, the timings, and work involved – and I went through the same process. She talked to everyone breezily, slipping in a confident ‘Happy Deepavali’ almost before they opened the door, and following it up with a sure question, “Aren’t you bursting crackers this year? The street’s so empty!” allowing the neighbor to inform us that they are doing this for the environment or that their aches and pains don’t allow them to (follow with a list of the aches and pains). It was so much better than last year.

We came home to my cousin on the phone. Last year, ignoring my frantic head-shakings and mouthing ‘I’m not here! I’m not here!’ (Seriously, how hard is that to understand?), I was forced to talk to my relatives. I love them, I love when they come to visit, but talking to them on the phone is nothing less than sheer torture, of which I had had enough already. This time, though, I was smart and came up here to type this, leaving my capable sister to bear the brunt. She doesn’t seem to look harried at all. I wonder, when I become older, will I actually be able to talk to people without having what my sister calls a ‘priceless expression’? Perhaps.