I must admit that the New Year started for me a few weeks ago. It was last November 12, the day on which the Diwali festival is celebrated throughout India. This festival begins on the thirteenth lunar day of the Ashvin month of the Hindu calendar and becomes the perfect occasion to invite good fortune to enter every home, since the celebration revolves around Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity. To attract all these good intentions, people from the Hindu community clean their houses, buy lots of sweets and wear new clothes.
You only had to go to the Karaikudi market, in the state of Tamil Nadu, to see that the sea had reached here, but this time it looked loaded with flowers, aromas and colors. On a dark street someone lights a flare - in the north, butter candles, known as diyas, are usually lit - and the hubbub revolves around this server whose only plan as a European in India is to lock himself in the hotel to work.
Since everything will be closed, the day before Diwali I go to the laundromat and, on the way, I discover a woman finishing painting a colorful drawing at the entrance of her house. The kolam is a design made of rice dust that not only prevents ants from entering the house and birds from eating - in India, feeding animals is synonymous with good luck - but also evokes a shortcut to the universe to start over. .
The women of each family are in charge of painting the kolam, a tradition that passes from generation to generation in all parts of the country, especially in the days before a celebration or festival like Diwali. Sometimes a candle is lit over the drawing, other times flower petals and even complicated kolams in the shape of lotuses or peacocks are drawn. In the streets everyone gathers to prepare this typical icon.
Arriving at the laundry, its owner, Pandithurai, asks me what I will do on Diwali. He told her that he works at the hotel. “I will pick you up on a motorcycle and you will come with me and my family.” I can't refuse. I wear the t-shirt I bought at a flea market in Jaipur and discover that my sneakers are torn but still holding up. The Diwali celebrated at Pandithurai's house the next day is a humble one, contained within four blue walls, eating rice on a banana leaf and taking selfies with his family.
By the time it gets dark, Pandithurai offers to take me home on a motorcycle. But I tell him that I will continue walking. Between the house and my hotel there are about five streets that wind through a small piece of jungle. I get lost for a while, I walk around a house swollen with crickets and frogs and I close my eyes.
At some point, someone lights a flare and, further away, a girl sets fire to the kolam painted on the ground in the morning. My sneakers can't hold up anymore and I take them off to walk barefoot to the hotel. Any time of the year is good to start over.
