Happy (belated) Diwali from my ashram here in northern India!
Again… it’s a brief post because I’m short on time, energy and (most importantly) broadband connection these days – if you’re interested in learning more about anything I mention, I definitely recommend doing a bit of research on your own!
If you haven’t been keeping up, I’m currently in Rishikesh, India for my 300-hour Yoga Teacher Training (YTT).
Diwali (also called Deepavali) is the Indian Festival of Lights holiday. It symbolizes the triumph of light over darkness, of good over evil, of the return of the Hindu god Rama, his wife Sita and brother Laxmana after defeating the demon king Ravana.
It’s such a beautiful holiday, and we had such an incredible time celebrating it over the course of several days!
We started our holiday celebrations on Wednesday evening as soon as we all got back from our off-day by attending a concert in our garden’s ashram.
The following day, we all spent our meditation hour working on drawings to create decorative banners for outside our ashram.
Then, we all gathered after dinner for henna, fireworks and music courtesy of some of the YTT students, who happen to be DJs.
We all stayed up dancing and singing until 10 p.m., when one of our teachers cut the mics to proclaim “that was the last song. You all have class tomorrow morning. It is still at 6 a.m. and will not be delayed. We will be taking attendance.”
After a bit of laughter, we all dispersed and went to bed.
We were all dragging pretty hard the next morning, so we were really relieved when we got a surprise announcement that our afternoon classes had been canceled so we could properly celebrate the holiday.
We started with rangoli… everywhere.
After we finished our rangoli, we attended a beautiful Diwali pooja, which is a ceremony full of mantra chanting and rituals to celebrate the occasion.
I didn’t take any photos of the ceremony; it felt a little too weird and disrespectful.
After the pooja, we all had sweet treats!
Then, we made our way down from our yogshala to the garden for food and a party.
There was an entire buffet waiting for us, and everything was SO incredibly amazing.
After we finished eating and chatting, we celebrated with dancing and fireworks.
Our ashram also lit diyas — small oil lamps — and scattered them across the campus for the festival. It was so beautiful to watch the flickering lights!
Because we had our 5:30 a.m. wake up bell the next morning, I called it a night at about 9 p.m.
I went back to my room to shower, and then concluded my night with some henna.
It was a wonderful celebration! I’m really lucky that my YTT program coincided with this beautiful Hindu holiday, and I’m so grateful that our ashram put together a celebration for us.
