Memories of Diwali

I love Diwali. Diwali is my favourite festival. My first memories of Diwali is from 1994. I grew up in a place littered with British era bungalows. The government allotted  house to my maternal grandfather was huge for a four year old kid. That was the house where I was brought to after coming into this world. I still remember almost everything about that house — the arrangement of furniture in every room, the trees, the British era graveyard 20 steps from my favorite Litchi tree and much more.

I have few recollections of Diwali of 1994. The house was being painted, old things were being disposed of, the roof was being waterproofed, weeds and unwanted plants were being uprooted (I did this a lot). As a kid, I had my own mini Khurpi (Hand Shovel) and I used to take great interest in gardening. I learnt this from my Nana Ji.

My Nani Ma had this huge cache of old glass bottles which would be used as Diyas  for the roof. These bottles had to fitted with wicks made out of old clothes and I used to contribute toward this effort. We had a huge number of earthen diyas to be placed in every corner of the house. These diyas used to be soaked in water for a day and then dried in the sun. The wicks of diyas were made from cotton pads by rolling them on the palms. I used to do this. Now, we get ready-made cotton wicks in the markets but these were old times. The next step was to place these wicks in the diyas and fill the diyas with mustard oil. All was exciting for me up to this stage. When it came to dipping the mouth of the wick in the mustard oil, I used to avoid that. I have never liked the way oil felt on my fingertips (I still don not like it). There used to be Chaumukha Diya which was used for Lakshmi Puja. (These memories are scattered from 1994 to 2001, with the exception of the years 1995-98. That is why I have not been careful with the tenses.)

From 1995 to 1998, there were no Diwali celebrations because of untimely deaths in our family. There was no Lakshimi Puja, no diyas, nothing. Maybe just one symbolic diya. Diwali day was just like any ordinary day in those years. I have some memories that in 1995 my Nana Ji got me a box of Phuljharis and I did some fireworks in spite of the household abstaining from the celebration. My concept of grief and mourning was yet to develop. The Diwali of 1997 came and went without us noticing. The houses in the neighbourood were lit up on that day and we were in gloom. The worst was yet to come. In 1998, my maternal grandfather passed away on 10 October. That Diwali was really dark.

Diwali returned to our home in all its glory in 1999. I have no specific memory of that year but we celebrated it and had fun. Since 1999, I had few special Diwali and a few terrible ones. The Diwali of 2006 was very special to me. I abstained from bursting crackers  from 2003 to 2005. In 2006, I actively enjoyed fireworks before abandoning it for good. It was special for other reasons as well. 2009 and 2010 were decent. I had returned home from college to celebrate Diwali. The Diwali of 2011 was my first and last in BHU. It was wonderful. We spent time cleaning and decorating our hostel, Ramakrishna Hostel. We went out to watch a movie that night. It is another thing that the movie — Ra One — was terrible.

Photos of Ramakrishna Hostel, Banaras Hindu University (Diwali 2011)

The Diwali of 2012 was my first at IISER Mohali and it was joyful. I have no memory of what happened the following year. In 2014, Diwali was on 23 October. It was a mix of despair and hope. My prospective PhD supervisor had confirmed his betrayal over a call on the day of Diwali or a day before.

I spent the Diwali evening of 2016 watching "Before The Flood".  In 2017, I spent my Diwali evening smoking Marlboro Reds at almost deserted Connaught Place. 2018. 2019 & 2020 were quite good and I celebrated them in peace.

This year Diwali fell on 4 November. 4 November is a heartbreaking day for me. In 2006, I had represented my school in the West Zone Chess Tournament in Delhi. I had won my first three games and I was just one game away from winning the West Zone tournament. I lost the last game on 4 November 2006. It was shattering. I went home cried for an hour and slept for four hours. I was really emotional about chess back then.

My Nani Ma passed away on March 2 this year. The maternal side didn't celebrate the festival. However, we celebrated it. She lived a full life. There is no point mourning over the loss of someone who lived a full life. Moreover, my earliest memories of this beautiful festival are associated with her. It would have been a disservice to her if I had not celebrated the festival.

Diwali gives me hope. I look forward to this festival. When I analyzed why I get excited before Diwali, I could think of only one reason —  maybe I am making up for those I missed during my childhood.

The Hopper Connection

Last night I discovered an interesting connection. Road to Perdition is one of my favourite movies. The Wikipedia says — "To establish the lighting of scenes in Road to Perdition, Mendes drew from the paintings of Edward Hopper as a source of inspiration, particularly Hopper's New York Movie (1939)". Mendes is Sam Mendes !

The cinematography in Road to Perdition was done by Conrad Hall who won a total of three Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, the last one of which came posthumously for Road to Perdition.

Road to Perdition is a cinematic marvel. I still remember being in awe of the movie after I watched it and thinking about how brilliant the cinematography was. Then, when I read about the movie a little more, I came to know that a lot of people feel about it the same way. I guess I have some knack for appreciating good art. One of the scenes is etched in my memory forever. The scene where Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) kills John Rooney (Paul Newman) is one of the finest pieces of cinematography ever done (In my humble opinion !).

So last night, after, I googled Edward Hopper and saw a few paintings of him. A few paintings seemed familiar. I had seen them before. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out where I had seen them. In December 2020, I had come across an artcile, "The Spanish 1918 Flu and the COVID-19 Disease: The Art of Remembering and Foreshadowing Pandemics" by Joseph L.Goldstein, Nobel laureate in physiology in 1985. Goldstein discusses how the works of art serve as a tool to remember as well as foreshadow pandemics or any other tragedy. He discusses how Edvard Munch, after surviving Spanish Flu, depicted his experience in a painting, "Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu". Munch's most famous work is "The Scream".

Goldstein elaborates upon the work of Edward Hopper with regards to COVID-19. I will reproduce Goldstein's  take on Hopper's work.

Cape Cod Morning (1950)

Goldstein's interpretaion of the above painting: "In the painting entitled Cape Cod Morning, a woman gazes out of the bay window, her arms tense and her grip locked tight on the table in front of her. Her focus is forward and to the outside world, yet she seems imprisoned in her own home, anxiously staring toward an uncertain future and hoping that the lockdown will end soon".

That is certainly an interesting take but this is only one of the interpretations of the work and the not the objective truth. An art's interpretation is slave to the intellectual history and disposition of the observer. I don't know about the original motivations of Hopper and his own view of this work, what led him to paint this or what he thought of it after the work was finished.

I can have my own interpretation of this work. In my opinion, this could very well describe a woman in rural America waiting for her husband or her young son to return home who has been missing in action. It has been five years since the end of the World War 2. She wakes up every morning to look out of the window and probe the horizon in the hope that her son/husband might be walking towards her. My interpretation can be completely wrong as I have zero knowledge about rural America, its vegetation, the types of homes they have over there. Do they even have these windows in rural American homes? I brought in World War 2 only because this painting is from 1950 and that seemed a reasonable assumption to make.

Nevertheless, Goldstein's interpretation is very interesting for our times.

Car Chair (1965)

Goldstein's interpretation of the above painting: "Traveling by train or airplane is typically conducive to conversations and interactions among the passengers. But that is not the case in Hopper’s painting entitled Chair Car (1965), in which four travelers are shown inside a commuter train. The inside space is dreary with no decorations. The travelers appear isolated from one another, each lost within his or her own world. The painting evokes a feeling of cold unpleasantness that anticipates our current practice of social distancing".

I don't have my own interpretation of this as of now !

Acknowledgement: The paintings have been taken from WIKIARTS.