A Child’s Diary: Idhika Diwan’s Corona Lockdown Days

November 19, 2020

Happy Diwali

One week before Diwali, I had holidays. One afternoon, in the holidays, I taught my friend how to play UNO. UNO is a card game. My friend was confused how to play UNO. But he loved the game. I also made a new friend, as my old friend introduced me to him. Now I have many friends in my house lane. I enjoyed playing with them every day in the holidays.

Diwali is also called the “Festival of Lights”. We celebrate this festival with fireworks. One week before Diwali, we made decorations out of old things like bangles, ice-cream boxes, old origami sheets (thin paper sheets). One afternoon, we went outside to by some stuff for crafts and diyas.  The first craft was my dad’s Akash Kandil, which is a lantern hung outside the house. 

The second craft was a Toran (a wall hanging on the door), made by me, my younger brother with help from my mom. My mom and I were covering the bangles with a yarn for the toran. I tried by myself but couldn’t do that. Instead, I helped my dad test the lights intensity in the Akash Kandil by putting the LED inside it.

In Thailand, flower garlands for God sometimes have plastic flowers in it. Only 4 flowers are plastic while others are fresh.  We cut the plastic flowers out from the garland and collected them, for 1 month.  During the holiday week, I and my younger brother painted these flowers in different colours like green, purple, blue, orange, and red. We are going to reuse them to make Toran.

Next, we weaved these painted flowers with a pattern of 10 flowers of each colour. We put a black coloured bead after every 10 flowers. At each end, we put my old bangle so that flowers don’t get out of thread. We hung the toran with the help of bangles. When my dad saw the Toran, he said that it was very beautiful.

On Diwali day, I and my younger brother decorated our house front door. When we were working, my friend came to ask us to play with him. But instead, we asked him to help us in the decorations. He said yes and together we tied flowers at the top of the door. My friend also helped us to decorate the swing in our front yard and the main gate.

We did the Diwali Pooja in the evening. I and my younger brother decorated the Pooja using our toys (Lego and Bingo). We used Lego to make beautiful flower designs. We also again reused coluored pistachio shells to make rangoli for Pooja. I was excited for the Pooja but I was more excited for the fire crackers. So after the Pooja and dinner, we went outside for the fire crackers. At first my younger brother was scared of the pattack bomb (a fire cracker, which when you throw makes a noise and the flash of light is seen, best to do at night outdoor).

Then we lit up the rocket Fuljadi – a straw with small fire crackers inside, when fire is lit on the wick it will sizzle for 5 sec. ,then 1 small fire cracker will pop out of the straw with the others following.  We also lit lots of Fuljhadis – a cracker which will sizzle and is the brother of rocket Fuljadi. When we lit the fuljhadi on fire, it sizzles and makes sparks of fire which are normally yellow in colour but can come in different colours like blue, red, pink and green.

After Diwali day, we had many fire crackers left. I invited my friends to light fire crackers. They had never lit fire crackers before. I was excited to spend time with my friends while enjoying fire crackers. The next day, I and my friends cleaned up the mess of fire crackers. My friends asked when are we going to light the fire crackers. She explained to them that colours of the fire crackers can only be seen when it gets dark. Later they came at night and we enjoyed the fire crackers again. I felt happy on all these days.

My school started on Monday, after Diwali. Winter season is starting. We get less time to play as the sun sets earlier than summer. I miss summer a lot as I get to play for longer time with my friends.

Bye for now!! Happy Reading!!