Nikita Buragohain: Diwali, the festival of lights, is a celebration cherished and celebrated enthusiastically by each and every Indian with utmost fervour, joy and devotion.
As we all know how significant this particular festival is, infact it is one of India’s biggest and most important celebrations of the year.
However, Diwali is no longer a festival celebrated just within our nation, but instead our Indian traditions are now being cherished and celebrated in the foreign land as well.
In a conversation with Hello Guwahati, Pooja Das who is originally from Guwahati City later settled in Chicago has shared some details about the Indian community in Chicago and some glimpses of how the entire community went ahead with the 2021 Diwali celebrations.
Starting with the Indian communities existing there, these communities are nearly 20-30 years old or in some places even older. Hence, the celebration of Indian festivals in Chicago has been continuing for a long duration now.
As informed by Pooja Das, who resides in the beautiful area of Lakeview Oakdale Avenue, the festive celebrations that she and her community has been engaged with, mostly takes place in the areas surrounded by the Indian people residing in Chicago. Some of these places include of Devon, Naperville, Aurora, etc.
Going ahead with the Diwali celebration that took place on 4th November (2021), this year the community members celebrated Diwali starting from “Kali Puja” in a Bengali community temple at Chicago Kalibari, which is located in a suburb area in Chicago named Glen Ellyn.
The members decorated the temple and also their homes with mesmerizing fairy lights, diyas and flowers.
The occasion was not only enjoyed by the Indian families in and around the area, their close friends and relatives, but even the local people and also people from other nationalities joined in.
To add more Indian flavour to the festivities they enjoyed different Indian sweets including Kaju Katli, Ladoo, Jalebi, etc.
The dress code or theme for the occasion required of dressing up in ethnic traditional Indian attires. For which, the women folk dressed up in their lovely sarees, kurtis, salwar kameez and the men got ready in their stunning kurta pyjamas.
When asked from where Pooja and her community members purchase the Indian decor items, food items, sweets and all the other essentials, she answered that they usually purchase the required items for such festive celebrations from Amazon or from the many Instagram sellers present there. She added by saying that, “We have Indian grocery shops here where we get all the things. One such shop near my home is ‘Patel Brothers’ which has outlets all over USA.”
Moreover, as the US does not impose Diwali celebration as a public holiday, so for Thursday’s Diwali celebration, the community members who are engaged in their respective professions, had to complete their scheduled work during the daytime, after which they gathered for the festive occasion in the evening.
When asked about what the motive is behind the formation of such a community in the land of Chicago, Pooja replied, “The motive behind forming such a community is to celebrate our own festivals far away from home and also to inculcate our Indian values to our next generations born and brought up here.”
To conclude, apart from promoting our Indian festivals and our cultural traditions, the communities there also engage in a lot of other initiatives during various course of time as per the requirement of the situation. For example – During the vaccination drive in USA, the communities stepped up and arranged for Covid -19 vaccines.
