Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/68

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But lo! now is the morning of the fifteenth day, Divali proper. The greatest fireworks are let off on the Divali day. No one is willing to part with his money on this day. He will neither borrow nor lend. All the purchases are supposed to have been finished the previous day. You are standing near the corner of a public road. Mark the shepherd trotting onward in his milk-white suit, worn for the first time, with his long beard turned up beside his face and fastened under his turban, singing some broken verses. A herd of cows, with their horns painted red and green and mounted with silver, follows him. Soon after you see a crowd of little maids, with small earthen vessels resting on cushions placed on their heads. You wonder what those vessels contain. Your doubt is soon solved by that careless maid spilling some milk from her vessel. Then observe that big man with white whiskers and a big white turban, with a long reed pen thrust into his turban. He has a long scarf wound round his waist with a silver inkstand adjusted in the scarf. He, you must know, is a great banker. Thus you see different sorts of persons leisurely going along, full of joy and mirth.

The night comes. The streets are resplendent with dazzling illumination; dazzling indeed to a person who has never seen Regent Street or Oxford Street, but by no means to be compared with the scale on which illuminations are carried out at the Crystal Palace, except in large towns like Bombay. Men, women and children wear their best costumes, almost all of various colours, and so form a wonderfully bizarre effect, which harmonizes into kaleidoscopic beauty. This is also the night for worshipping Saraswati, the goddess of learning. Merchants start their new ledgers, by making the first entry. The officiating priest, the ubiquitous Brahmin, mutters some prayers and invokes the goddess. At the end of the worship, the children, who are only too impatient, set the fireworks ablaze; and as this worship generally takes place at a fixed time, the streets resound with the popping and fizzing and cracking of fireworks. Pious people then go to the temples, but here too there is nothing to be seen but mirth and glee, dazzling light and splendour. The following day, i.e., the new year's day, is the day of paying and receiving visits. Kitchen fires are put out on this day, so that people eat the cold food which has been previously prepared.