Monday, November 12, 2007

Diwali Celebration...

Diwali is celebrated on new moon day. Many of us will have Nombu which is celebrated on new moon day & the day before new moon day is considered as our diwali. So we will have two days to celebrate.

For the first day, we have to cook non-veg. We prepare dosai & along with sugar we devote this to God. We convey our wishes to our relatives & neighbours. After that we will cook non-veg. Then we will fire crackers. Also we will watch our TV programs.

For the second day, its purely veg. Elders will have fastings. We prepare many varieties of food & also we prepare our special item "Athirasam" (sweet & very delicious one) along with "Murukku/Elladai" (lite spicy one) which we will keep in a clay pot in the center of our pooja room. The clay pot will have odd number of dots of turmeric & kungumam. In that we keep some athirasam & murukku/elladai, flowers, betels & betel nuts, kungumam, turmeric & thaali kayer (sorry dont know its english name. A yellow rope which we used to wear after marriage as a symbol of married women. Very effective one) & lastly nombu kayer (a different yellow rope with pink colour in the middle which we tie in our hands which acts as a symbol of nombu). This nombu kayer will be in different
colours depending their family culture. After devoting this to God, we have to get blessings from family elder person (father or grandpa) & they will give a set which contains all what we kept in clay pot. Then we have to tie the nombu kayer in our hands, then we must eat all the things which we got from elder (except that betel & betel nuts, i will give it to my mom). The point is only those who are having nombu only can eat the things in clay pot. Others cant.

Next, distribution of this athirasam, murukku & sweets to relatives & neighbours will commence.

This time we didnt took nombu bcoz of my grandpa's death. If we didnt take nombu then we cant do this upto three years. Thats why we planned to take on Karthigai Deepam. So that we can continue this without any interruption.

Karthigai Deepam (24 Nov 2007)

Celebrated on the full moon day in the Karthigai month, the annual Karthigai Deepam festival is viewed by many as an extension of the Hindu Deepavali (or Diwali) festival. And like Deepavali, devotees light candles and lanterns in their homes creating an incredible spectacle.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

lovely reading & also nice knowing about you celebrations...its amazing how diverse our country is and how traditions change from state to state, community to community even a festival like this is so different ..except for crackers I think which remains the same..the significance and the rituals change ...but the spirit remains the same

Jeevan said...

We did the same as u said, but only non-veg was missing where we don't eat on Thursday for Sai baba.

I tie the nombu thread and removed it next day. Hope u have a nice time.

kalai said...

Kalyan,

Thanks a lot. yes we have different traditions but our spirit remains the same as we are Indians. Ya crackers too remains the same....

Jeevan,

oh i see... can we remove that nombu thread on 2nd day??? we will tie for odd number of days....

Iam sure that u all had a very nice time... take care... enjoy..

Maayaa said...

kalai..

online paramapadham pannavanga neengala??
http://members.tripod.com/~kalai/game/

kalai said...

Priya,

athu naan ellainga priya.....

naan verum paperla dhaan create pannuvean....

Alok said...

Happy Diwali to u

kalai said...

Alok,

Thank u friend...

Unknown said...

nice comment abt nombu ya

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