Deepavali: Awareness of the Inner Light

Northern Lights over Oslo - photo by flickRarity

When I was in kindergarten, I learned about the different ethnic groups (known in Singapore as "races") in Singapore and the festivals they celebrated. Ours, the Chinese "race", was coolest because we had our New Year for two days in a row, and we received cash money from relatives and friends of our parents.

Every other festival was known as a "New Year". Hari Raya was "Malay New Year", Deepavali was "Indian New Year". We also celebrated with the ethnic groups known as the "race" of "others" during the proper "New Year", or "Ang Moh New Year", as my grandparents used to call the first day of January. Christmas and Easter were also "Ang Moh" festivals which we knew weren't New Year's Days. You just know these things when you're such a smart kid.

We've been invited to a Deep­avali lun­cheon this week, and I’ve only realised that it’s only been in the last decade or so that some of us have started call­ing it Diwali as well. We also watched a very funny episode of The Office titled "Diwali".

Naomi asked me why there was a difference between the names, and whether they were two separate festivals. Being the smart kid that I am, I told her that they were one and the same, and that Diwali was Hindi for Deepavali, and Deepavali was Tamil for Diwali, and that we've only started calling it Diwali because of an increasing North Indian / Bollywood influence here, and that previously, all Singaporeans knew about India was that everyone spoke Tamil because if you are Indian you are Tamil.

As with most things I state with an air of author­ity, I found later that I was only half right.

Diwali and Deep­avali are actu­ally two dif­fer­ent fes­ti­vals. Diwali is cel­e­brated in the north one day after Deep­avali is cel­e­brated in the south. Diwali cel­e­brates the return from exile of Lord Ram to Ayo­dyha, while Deep­avali cel­e­brates the vic­tory of Lord Krishna over the demon Naraka.

Thank good­ness for the ingter­neck, else I’d never have googled the term ”difference between Deepavali and Diwali" and I'd never have landed on a blog post titled, “Difference between Diwali in North India and Deepavali in South India".

And while I was at it, I looked up some more stuff about India and her peoples, just to add to the anecdote I'm about to put here about a platoon mate of mine who got really really offended when the Chinese platoon mates called him “Bangkalee” and “Kel­ing kia” in what we thought was Hokkien, both being terms the older generations of Chinese used to call Indians, and akin to when every Singaporean calls any Caucasian "Ang Moh".

"I am not from Kalinga, nor am I of Ben­gali ori­gin”, said Cor­po­ral Sel­vam Sivara­man very elo­quently, before he added just as elo­quently, “you stu­pid Chi­nese com­mu­nist bas­tard Ching Chong chow chee bye motherfuckers!”

So, yes, you should never any­howly use the word “Ben­gali” or “Kalinga” to call any per­son of Indian ori­gin unless they really were from those places. And even so, it pays to note that these terms, over the gen­er­a­tions, have gained some sort of deroga­tory qual­ity to them.

You could have the excuse that you grew up in the days before all schools had com­pul­sory “racial harmony" days where every kid has to come in traditional ethnic costumes to better understand each other's cultures. But it's still up to you to go find out these things yourselves, and not wait for your platoon mate to set you right by screaming at you.

Besides, the last time I saw a Racial Harmony Day in a primary school, I saw one kid come dressed as Spider-Man.

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