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It’s that time of the year again. Diwali is tomorrow and my local supermarket is full of happy shoppers. I buy mundane lettuce and mustard seeds and milk. Mine is just another shopping list. My family doesn’t really celebrate festivals. Everyone else around me seems to be touched by a hard magic. Their shopping lists are filled with amazing excess and a cornucopia of forbidden temptations. I watch enviously as a man loads up his cart with a dozen tins of rosogullas. Each tin contains twelve or thirteen pieces. Somehow, my imagination insists he is going home to open each tin and enjoy each succulent rotund piece of heaven himself. Yes, a mithai deprived brain is a dangerous thing.
A lady in my queue has bought enough boxes of soan halwa to fill two shopping carts. That delicate, stick to your mouth ghee soaked square of sweet white strands. Variously known as buddhi ka baal (old woman’s hair) and other such misnomers, the making of soan halwa is a feat of physical strength and endurance that is quite remarkable, especially since it results in this most ethereal of mithais.
All around me, this river of excessive consumption flows unabated. No one is buying one or two of anything today. Shiny faces light up as multiples of five and up are deposited in the carts. Almonds? Five kilos! Ghee? Clean out the shelf. Milk? I imagine the litres being cooked down to make kheer or rawo or rabdi. Sugar? Take it all and hang the diet!!
I get to chatting with the check out girl as she rings up my bill. She has been grumbling under her breath at the supervisor. It seems unfair that in the midst of such conspicuous happiness, here is a very young girl who looks so unhappy. I ask her what the matter is. The words burst out of her with rage and bitterness. She was due to get off her shift at noon and had planned to go to college to submit an assignment. She is doing her B.Com in a suburban institution. It takes her almost an hour by train to get from work to college, then another forty minutes to get home. Her mother is not there at home. Ma chali gayi. (Mom is gone). She says this bald truth to me without flinching. I don’t want to imagine where her mother has gone. And I can’t bring myself to ask. Sometimes, our western standards of privacy and intrusion make us needless strangers to our own. So she really needed to be off at noon if she was going to get any Diwali cooking or decorations done for her younger siblings. And that @#%^&+@ of a supervisor (she doesn’t say it but her face says it all) is now telling her she’ll have to work till two. As she slams open the cash register, she asks me, Madam, it’s Diwali for everyone but not for me. Is that fair?
I have no answer. I make comforting noises, accept my change and leave. She is already turning away to the next customer, the lady who has bought out the soan halwa counter. Her thin young face is steely and set in a frown.
I wonder whether to say anything as I wish the supervisor a happy Diwali on my way out. I hesitate, wondering if I’m interfering or possibly bringing more trouble down on the check out girl. There is a bitter taste in my mouth at my middle class manners and morals that render me helpless – and no amount of mithai is going to dissolve it today. That young girl, part time cashier, part time student, part time householder, is younger than my son. She has responsibilities she cannot turn away from. She should be out with her friends, shopping and giggling and enjoying Diwali. No, it isn’t fair at all. I turn back at the door. She is ringing up yet another cartload of calories with the same steely look on her face. I hope she makes it home in time to celebrate Diwali with her family. I hope that the small steady light of hope and renewal finds her and shines on her tonight.
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