In collaboration with ViralNext Media
In a Maharashtrian home, Diwali begins in the kitchen a week early. Grandmothers, mothers and aunts sit together frying chakli, rolling karanji and cutting shankarpali until every steel dabba in the house is full. This is faral, and offering a plate of it to every visitor is the whole point of the festival.
On Narak Chaturdashi the family wakes before sunrise for abhyanga snan: warm oil massaged in, then utne (a paste of besan, turmeric and fragrant herbs) scrubbed off before the bath. Many homes crush a bitter karit fruit underfoot, a small act of defeating Narakasura.
Children build a killa, a mud fort in the courtyard, in memory of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's forts, and fill it with clay soldiers. Above every door hangs an akash kandil, the sky lantern, and Padwa and Bhau Beej close the week with family.
