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The White House opened its doors to Indians to celebrate Diwali with US President Barack Obama greeting the guests and lighting the traditional Indian lamps. Each guest left with a box of Indian sweets and memories of feeling at home. In London, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wore a garland and hosted a Diwali party at 10 Downing Street to cap a week of Indian festivities in the UK.

What fun.

While I wistfully read how Indians abroad celebrated Diwali, I was trying hard to imagine a party at the Great Hall of People at Tiananmen Square with the Chinese leadership lighting lamps and serving us laddoos.

I can only say I survived my second Diwali in Beijing. Four days before Diwali, the foreign ministry issued a public and aggressive objection to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s October 3 visit to Arunachal Pradesh that China controversially claims as its own. Then the Chinese media unleashed a scathing torrent of anti-India rhetoric in the official newspapers controlled by the Communist Party.

At the same time, the strict Internet censorship imposed ahead of China’s October 1, 60th anniversary, continued to control my Google. There were moments when my Google searches for ‘India-China’ would be blocked. Facebook continued to be inaccessible even through proxy servers and I couldn’t wish dozens of friends Happy Diwali or feel good sharing a peek at their festive photographs.

I was in my apartment on a cold Thursday evening, trying to interpret the acerbic rhetoric that even veteran Indian analysts are still grappling to analyse, when the doorbell rang. An employee of the Taj Pavilion, one of Beijing’s oldest Indian restaurants, was at my door with a red box with a pink satin bow and a shiny golden border. A card attached to it said Happy Diwali. Inside the box were two boondi laddoos (sweet balls of gramflour spiced with delicate flavours of cardamom and saffron), and an assortment of Indian sweets.

On Diwali night, the Indian Embassy hosted a dinner with song and dance performances (Jai Ho of course) and a customary round of firecrackers. Most of the guests were home before 10 pm. I think the best Diwali gift for Indian Beijingren (Beijing people) was that box, the only box of sweets I received this Diwali and the only authentic connection with the spirit of the festival back home.

In India, the gift boxes of sweets would pile up at home and I would feel stuffed just glancing at tables groaning with assorted goodies. But feeling cut off in a city with none of the festive fervour and hardly 500 Indians, placing that little box on my dining table struck a chord in a way that’s hard to put in words.

I thought I was over-reacting by feeling so sentimental, and maybe Indians living with family in Beijing had a better time. But another young friend who was approaching Diwali feeling “bleak in Beijing’’ said she felt the same rush of delight and was extremely touched to receive her own box.

The restaurant’s cooks from remote villages in Uttaranchal in north India — where they reach after two to three days of travel from Beijing during their annual holiday — had made 400 laddoos for Beijing’s Indians. These sweets are rarely available in Beijing’s only hole-in-the-wall grocery for Indian food products, that somehow survived the Chinese bulldozer. I had forgotten the taste of laddoos.

As I write this on the day after Diwali, a dust storm is whipping trees and booming through Beijing as it covers everything in a yellow coat. The windows are shut but fine dust is seeping inside the apartment. The only bright spot is the box with one last Beijing ka laddoo.

Hope everybody else enjoyed a much Happier Diwali!

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Posted by Reshma Patil on Monday, October 19, 2009 at 12:00 pm 
Filed under China · Tagged China, diwali, indian embassy, indian food, indian hotel, Indian restaurant, ladoo, Taj hotel

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