A Cracker Of A Diwali

Just you wait. It'll be an I-love-my-India version of Christmas in New York—not just mithai dabbas and dry fruits, card parties and fireworks, but an overpowering mix of back-to-tradition festivity with post-liberalisation spending habits drawing into their fold every imaginable consumer product and service. Just you wait till the economy turns: the merchants of Indian kitsch are itching to reinvent Diwali as never before—a month-long family mela of unabashed spending.

Not that they haven't begun doing so already: check out the New Age puja kits, Diwali cards that stretch the limits of English vocabulary, new-look hampers that contain everything from books to aromatherapy products to tins of pre-cooked gourmet meals, Devdas diyas, feng-shui lamps, Chinese lanterns and pots, gel candles, dinner-dance dos at hotels and an e-market delivering Diwali "combos" and special Bhaidooj puja sets with diya, Karachi halwa and card to the dear-and-not-so-near ones. But people like Anil Moolchandani sniff at these tired measures. "They are as hackneyed as the silver paper streamers and coloured lights that decorate shopfronts every Diwali," he says. "What we really have to do is to promote Diwali as the only Indian celebration, a Christmas for Indians: a time to exchange gifts and cards not only for corporate houses, but for everyone. It can be done."

Moolchandani should know: the head of the Rs 50-crore Archies Cards and Gifts empire is still celebrating his latest triumph—the reinvention of a little-known puja by traditional north Indian wives, Karva Chauth, into a spectacular spending spree renamed in a nationwide TV promotion as Husband's Day. "Traditionally," explains Moolchandani, a former saree shop owner who started his cards and gifts business 23 years ago in the proverbial basement with a mere Rs 1,000, "it's card companies anywhere in the world who have invented occasions for celebration, like Valentine's Day, Friendship Day, Mother's Day or Father's Day. All you need is a story, the older the better, and for the other industries to pick it up from there. Husband's Day worked because an insurance company joined in, and saree shops and jewellers pitched in. It will only work if other industries tap the sentiment we create."

Just how well it worked was apparent in the week-long shopping orgy that led up to Karva Chauth, especially in Delhi: mehndi parlours, beauty parlours, gyms, bangle bazaars, saree shops, jewellers and gift shops stayed open till late at night to make the most of this unexpected bonanza. "We were rushed off our feet the whole day," says Harish Mehra of leading jewellers Mehrasons. Retailers, faced with the prospect of yet another bleak festive season, outdid themselves in wooing back their recently shop-shy customers. From slimming clinics to insurance companies to hotels and beauty clinics, everyone wanted a piece of the action. One enterprising fashion store even offered a three per cent discount on every traditional adornment that a woman came decked out in: "Sindoor+Bindi+Mangalsutra+Bangles+Payal+Saree/Salwar Suit+Ring+Earrings=24 per cent discount." So trendy indeed was Karva Chauth this year that when the Austrian embassy realised that their national day clashed with it, they set up a Karva Chauth pavilion with traditional breaking-fast goodies, even putting up a fake moon in case the real one decided to play truant that evening and spoil the fun.

The message was clear: new slogan+old tradition+wide promotion=good times for everyone. The formula has worked before. Valentine's Day, for one. "There was a big demand for love cards, and we wanted to fill that vacuum," explains Moolchandani. Archies introduced Valentine's Day in 1988 as a "special occasion for expressing the feelings of the heart"; it was a great way to promote card sales, and it worked.And it didn't take long for other companies to reap what Archies had sown. Fourteen years after its introduction, cash counters across the country, in hotels, pubs, department stores, bookstores ring on the 14th of that slack post-festive month of February almost as merrily as they do around Diwali. As Mehra explains, "We use Valentine's Day to sell to the younger set." For some, like Jay Singh, co-owner of the upmarket Bangalore pub 180 Proof, Valentine's is a bigger occasion than Diwali: "We invest in providing a unique theme and decor for two big occasions—Valentine's and New Year's."

Reinvention of traditional festivals is hardly new. "Garba Nights" have now become as cosmopolitan as dhoklas, with enterprising women setting up workshops to teach the dandiya raas to women who had never danced in their life before, whether in Lucknow or in Hyderabad. Says Sucharita Khanna, a Bharatanatyam dancer who runs dandiya classes every year for Lucknawis during Dussehra, "Come festive season and my hands are full teaching the dandiya. The learners are from all age groups—15 to 50 plus." This Navratri, Lucknow shops cashed in on the dandiya craze, selling costume jewellery, sticks, shoes and dresses especially worn for the dance.

In Bengal, private buyers from Rajasthan to Bangladesh added a new twist to the old Durga Puja festivities: they came scouting for exotic pandal decorations—huge shellac models of ancient castles, wood panel decorations and other bric-a-brac, offering prices ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 5,00,000 to save them from the traditional immersion. It was not uncommon to see puja pandals sporting decorations with 'Sold' tags on them. Similarly, in Chennai, the traditional festival of dolls during Navratri, Kolu, has been steadily transmogrifying from the family ritual of displaying dolls handed down over generations into an elaborate public display at petrol pumps and shopping malls.

Even Vinayak Chaturthi, once an ordinary family puja where women bought small clay Ganeshas and made modaks at home, has turned in the past few years into an elaborate community celebration, with huge pandals and even a procession of young men dancing the bhangra. The local Ayudha Puja—where a worker worships his tools—is now a very public pageant, with the city's autorickshaw drivers appropriating the festival. So you have pandals with loudspeakers blaring music and elaborately decorated autos parading the city.

And it's not card companies alone who invent festivals. In Tamil Nadu, the dmk government added a fourth day to the traditional three-day Pongal. Called Tiruvalluvar Day in memory of the Tamil poet, the day is celebrated as the Festival of Farmers.

Curiously enough, while regional festivals are slow to spill across India, western festivals quickly become national fads, especially among the urban youth. Take Halloween. This quintessentially American festival on October 31 is fast taking root in Indian metros, and even smaller cities like Lucknow. Says Bangalore pub owner P.M. Ananth Narayan: "This week it's not Diwali that we are focused on, but Halloween. We have a special range of cocktails designed for Halloween, the music will be spooky and we'll have ghouls and skeletons serving at the tables."

Likewise, pubs have offers where if kids walk in with their fathers and mothers on Father's or Mother's Day, there are goodies on offer and free drinks on the house. But the crown for creating new celebrations must surely go to Hyderabad's popular Country Club. This year, the club decided to 'celebrate' September 11 by dubbing its lawns Ground Zero and installing giant screens to replay the horrors of that fateful day. Sunil Dutt was especially flown in to add a celebrity touch to the event.A month earlier, the club celebrated Friendship Day by flying in supercop K.P.S. Gill who tied friendship bands on the wrists of inmates of the local jail where the club sponsored a fashion show.

But the real challenge lies in reinventing Diwali. As Moolchandani points out, "It is the one festival that is common to all parts of India, it has a strong story and best of all, it is so deeply Indian." But wouldn't it be like reinventing the wheel? He certainly doesn't think so: "We can turn it into our Christmas, we can skip the New year and make Diwali our New Year. We can promote it as the only celebration for all Indians."

His enthusiasm suddenly wanes: "The only problem is, with the markets so dull, and people in no mood to celebrate, this is not the year for the reinvention. We would be wasting our time if we attempted it now." Instead, he picks on an easier task: "People have been saying after Karva Chauth, why not a Wife's Day? But I need a story to hang the day on."