05 Nov A Diwali Miracle

It is going to be my first Diwali in Italy and away from home. Where all the 5 days, including the major celebration of Diwali, is spent having multiple dinners with all the family members (read: all the aunts, uncles and cousins) who live within a 20-kilometre radius of each other. And then running to a friend’s place to light firecrackers, play cards and talk away the night. Exchanging sweets, decorating the house, doing a new rangoli every day and lighting Diyas around all the windows of the house. Making sure that the house is never dark even if we are not home so that Goddess Laxmi doesn’t miss out on coming to our place.

This year Diwali was going to be a bittersweet experience for me. I had planned on doing what any other crazy Diwali loving person away from home does. Provided there are other crazy Diwali loving Indians around… Or anyone else for the matter who knows about Diwali or is even remotely interested in it… I decided to throw a Diwali bash. A cross between actual traditional Diwali celebrated at my place and a ‘party’. It was supposed to be a gathering of a small group of friends plus any Indian my husband knew through work and some of his labmates who wanted to see the great Indian ‘ festival of lights’. I was pretty psyched to show off my decorating skills and the typical Indian festival cuisine that our family makes each Diwali. I also wanted everyone to get a feel of what ‘real’ Diwali is like. The preparations were supposed to start this Monday, a week ahead of the festival.

There was a buzz of excitement and expectation in the air. More in my head though. You know-how in the romantic movies the lady meets her white knight and goes skipping through day smelling roses and stuff? Well, that was me. Minus the roses. And the deep breaths of fresh air and the loud sighs and smiling at strangers. You see there was a storm going on and I was pretty much stuck inside the house until it blew off.

Do you note how I am using the past tense? Sometimes the things you are most excited about have a way of crashing in around your head. So my husband was met with an accident. It was not a major accident nor a minor one either. The accident was somewhere between a major car crash and ‘she drove the bicycle over my foot again’. And it started with something as mundane as getting up at 4 in the morning to pee.

He came back to bed, felt dizzy and, stumbled over our large bed in the dark, hit his head on the bed frame and fell to the floor face down, where he ended up smashing his teeth through his lips and chipping them on the floor. And yes it looked as bad as it sounded. Imagine waking up to a loud crash around 4 in the morning and see your husband on the floor in a pool of blood. Okay, I am exaggerating a little. It was not so much a pool as a splash of blood and a couple of broken tooth chunks. But it is pretty bad for someone whose worse experience dealing with injuries is a knife cut to the thumb while cutting lemons. And that made me nearly faint.

Now imagine this level of injury in a country you have recently moved to where only one in 10 people know English and the only person who knows some Italian in the house can’t recall a word of it. I mean what’s the purpose of knowing the emergency number if you can’t tell the paramedics about the injury or your address? Oh, and did I mention there was a storm outside?

I am proud to say I did not faint once. Came pretty close a couple of times though. Only the thought of my husband going through this all alone kept me away from the edge. Well, that and a few hard splashes of water and frequent trips to the bedroom where I spend precious few seconds breathing deeply with my head between my legs. Anyway, long story short, after a frantic phone call to a friend back home who is a doctor I could patch him up sufficiently until the ambulance took us to a hospital where we spent 6 hours in the emergency ward. We came back home, called the family, Diwali obviously all forgotten until my sister called later today to ask about donating the books I left home to the local library. And a request to “redecorate” my room.

And you know what? I am not even remotely disappointed. So I will not have a chance to decorate my house, cook and show off to more than 20 people. I will also not have to cook for 20 people. I am still decorating the house even if I have to stay up half the night decorating, after taking care of my husband who came out of this incident with a couple of stitches in the head and lips. It could have been much worse. This just struck me, but I think it’s our own little Diwali miracle.

I also came out of this incident with a couple of things. One of which is a healthy fear of walking into dark rooms before putting on the lights. I also registered at the local school for learning Italian as soon as my husband is well again. I also learned that I can think clearly and take charge under pressure. And for someone with confidence and anxiety issues, this is a huge step in believing in myself again. Got a couple of new and, hopefully temporary, anxieties one of which is that I can’t seem to leave my husband alone in a room for more than a few seconds.

I can surely say that this made me stronger as a person and definitely made us stronger as a couple. Here I am right now completing my blog post while my husband watches the T.V. I do this while answering concerned phone calls from both sets of the family (immediate and extended!), who have a natural concern and a gazillion tips on how to take care of my guy. And of course curiosity on how we are handling all of this. Not the kind of calls I was hoping for this Diwali. See we have a custom of meeting the friends and family who are around us and calling those who aren’t. The first hour of every morning for five days easily goes into calling the people. Tomorrow will bring a new round of calls to the family. For those who do not know about the accident, it will probably start with a happy ‘whatever day of Diwali’ ( insert dhanteras/wagh baras/new year depending on the
date) and call us if you need any help once they know about the accident.

So Diwali will be a little different. I am planning a new kind of Diwali celebration. Instead of the big party, it will just be the two of us. There will still be decorations and diyas as well as good food. But instead of the fine Indian festival food, we will probably be having soft cooked rice with curd, a banana smoothie to replace the sweet and sour lassi, and sheera instead of solid sweets that you need to chew. It will still be great, however. And as my first Diwali post marriage, definitely more memorable!