Blog 14 - Festivals at school



A new year has just begun with a lot of joy, hope and fervor. We have all had weeks of celebrating one festival after another in the last two months. This season was and is my favorite time of the year. Even in school, this was the best season of the year.

Our school celebrated all the festivals in a grand way. For Dusshera, we would have a massive ‘Golu’: multiple steps decked with hundreds of dolls brought in by teachers and students. Teachers would even take turns and perform the puja everyday and even make the tasty ‘Sundal’ and distribute to all the students. We would be taken for a class-wise tour of the Golu, a great way to bunk one period of study! They would also have fancy dress competition with a Dusshera theme for the nursery kids, who would come in costumes of all possible gods or characters from our mythology.

After Dusshera would come Deepavali/Diwali, the festival of lights. Diwali would be a school holiday, where we would celebrate with family and friends at home. However, in the days leading to Diwali, we would have endless discussions of what crackers we bought or will buy, who is brave enough to blast the ‘Lakshmi vedi’ or the ‘1000 waala’ or the dreaded ‘atom bomb’; or what dress and from where we wanted to buy it (Pothys was a favorite back then), for the festival. Thankfully, now the cracker bursting activity has drastically reduced due to environmental and child-labor concerns. Once the festival was over, and we got back to school, another one week of discussion would be about who did what for Diwali, and which latest movie they saw in the theatre or on Sun TV. Even in the local train, our teachers or other working ladies would discuss their family purchases of the season (a new grinder or a ‘sumeet’ was a big deal back then). Of course, there would be a massive exchange of all kinds of sweets and snacks, both home-made and from shops, among friends and well-wishers.

I was part of the school choir group, I think we were 5-6 girls in the daily school assembly along with our music teacher Mrs. Karpagam, singing different prayers (dedicated to different gods on different days). I don’t remember the exact order, but we sang everything from ‘Totakashtakam’, ‘Annapurnashtakam’ to ‘Mahishasuramardhini stotram’ etc.
Come December and we would have Christmas carols’ singing, in addition to the regular prayers. Every day was a different carol, but my most favorite ones include, “Joy to the world...”, “Silent night…”, “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer…”, and of course the crowd favorite, “Dashing through the snow….” 😊

From the first of December to the last day before the half-yearly holidays began, we would sing these beautiful songs. The memory of 1000-something voices standing in height-order at the assembly singing “Hey! jingle bells! jingle bells! jingle all the way…” will stay with me forever.

Happy new year once again, everyone!

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