Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Deepavali, Dipawali, Whatever
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2004 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Happy Diwali!
While dressing up for work in a shimmery pyjama juba, a.k.a. salwar kameez, I discovered that I don't have any kumkum, a.k.a. kunkuma, a.k.a. bindi, a.k.a. the red dot you wear in the middle of your forehead or between your eyebrows. I used a marker instead.
Diwali usually celebrates the day Rama comes back to Ayodhya (don't get me started on temples and mosques in Ayodhya) after defeating Ravana, a ten-headed demon. I'm reading the first book of Ashok K. Banker's passable fairy-tale retelling of the Ramayana right now; I should time my reading so that I read that part of the story a year from today.
