Day #26: Traditions (100 Days Gratitude Challenge)
Day #26: Traditions (100 Days Gratitude Challenge) Today we celebrated Deepavali in Chennai. I got up late after 6 am. It’s a holiday so no hurry. I walked Alfie my dog for around half an hour. There was some scattered bursting of crackers in the opposite cluster of flats. My cluster of around 550 flats was silent and sleepy. It was like any other holiday here. I returned home to find everyone still asleep. My mother in law who is visiting had just got up. Contrast this to around 40 years back when my dad used to wake me up at 4:30 am, apply warm oil on my head and all over my body. Hot water will be in the boiler and all of us would take turns to have a bath, wear new clothes and go out to burst crackers. Some of us who wanted to burst the first cracker would jump out of bed earlier and shuck out to burst a few before the bath so we can claim that we are the first to burst on this street. The previous week my mom would have made laddus, murukkus, and other assorted sweets...