Diwali Celebration in Italy, 2018

Diwali is one of the biggest and a major festival celebrated in India which holds a special place in every Indian’s heart. And when you celebrate it with your family in your house, the feeling and emotion is priceless.

Like every other Indian, I too wanted to celebrate Diwali with my family and dear ones but one of the biggest disadvantage of living in foreign land is you miss your culture, your food and especially your festivals.

So, this year, rather than missing our culture and fun we used to have on Diwali, we decided to celebrate it here in Genoa, Italy, where we live currently. We (me and my husband) planned everything like starting from house cleaning, shopping, house decorating, making sweets and snacks and Diwali Dinner. The to-do list initially looked easy and sorted but later, as we started with one by one, we realised it wasn’t as easy as we initially thought.

In India, before 7-8 days to Diwali, we start cleaning of our entire house. So, continuing the same tradition, we also thought to do so by ourselves. ()

After cleaning, we moved towards decorating our house. We bought new curtains, new sheets, lighting, some indoor house plants and flowers. With all these new things, our house got little make-over and just with the touch of colourful lights and fragrances of flowers and candles, it got that shinny festive look.

On the day of Lakshmi Pooja, with almost 15-17 people from all the parts of India, we celebrated Diwali at our house. We had amazing time that day. Major attraction of the day was food. Since, there were people from almost every corner of India, we got to taste many varieties of Indian cuisines. I can literally say that, it was a day where Dosa met Parathas and Dhokala met Rasagulla () . We shared lots of food, we exchanged greetings and wishes with each other. It was a day full of fun and happiness all around.