Diwali @ Ajay Bhai's place

Well, well...our first Diwali celebrations at Indore did not turn out to be what it should have been - Shveta down with cold fever (and with me catching up with her on that front)..the morning of 1st saw both of us waking up with headaches. After downing a few tablets of Citzen and Nimulid, both of us got into decorating the house. Shveta beautifully adorned the floor with tiny foot-step designs symbolizing the walking in of Goddess Lakshmi into the house...then we filled in the tiny Diyas and other earthen lamps with oil and wicks and lit them, placing them at our door-steps and puja-room. Shveta then did pooja and I joined her - we used a large Cadbury chocolate bar as the "prashad"!!!!..:)

After the pooja, we lazed around for some more time - I was at the computer listening to some music - the blasted thing keeps hanging every 10 minutes and makes me resolve all the more to get a new machine.

By evening 7-ish, we went to Ajay Bhai's place - attended their pooja, ate some gujiyas, halwa, ladoos and anaarsaas. All the menfolk, except Ajay Bhai's father, were in Kurta-salwars while the ladies were decked up in her best saris and jewellery (for some mysterious inexplicable reason, I did not take any picture!!!....:-((...why am I such a duh!!??!!)...we then had a meal of puri-aloo and jimmykand and then left for the bank to get some moolah and some pans etc. After buying the pans, we took a detour and went to our old pad - Royal Palace - and met the Saihgals, and the Khatwanis. The lady-surd had her sister visiting her from Delhi and both had an uncannily similar voice (I really pity the rest of the bunch there)....they were all missing Shveta this Diwali, apparently..wish they showed all that love a tad more when we stayed in that condo.

We then returned back to Ajay Bhai's place for the crackers party and boy o boy, what an evening it was - must have continued way beyond 11.30PM when we bid them goodbye - some Rs 100000 must have been put into bangs, sparks and smoke last night - a huge duffel bag was fished out, jam-packed with all kinds of crackers - sparklers, rockets, whistles, all kinds of bombs. And Mr Qazi, the "bomber man" was blowing them as if he were a veteran - tying up those big bombs into big bundles and putting them under tin cans or pots and lighting them - rocking the entire block! Then you had those 5000 stick chain bombs that would be more of nuisance to all the residents of the block - incessantly rocking the place with chitty-chitty - bang-bang sounds...siren-bombs that would make whistling sounds and shoot away everywhere in all directions....there was hardly anything for the kids - all of them were holding those harmless sparklers....

The guests of honor were the Bhatnagars with the daughter Nikita, the Mishras (the neighbors) with some of their guests, and the surprise man was Ajay Bagadiya...

Soon after all that, we left for home. I got back to work and Shveta went to sleep....the girl would be off to Delhi from 3rd through 6th. Already missing her...

Enough for the day...back to my reports....god!!..