Jaipur Journals- Happy Deepavali

This time, as there's a long week of holidays, I decided to stay back at home rather than visiting friends or travel around and celebrate Diwali in my own way. 

I always jumped to the idea of traveling but, I realised that I need to spend time for myself to get into this festive  mood in my own way. How do we celebrate festivals? Do we need gatherings to call it festivals? How do we celebrate festivals. I had a lot of these questions and I decided to ponder over and figure out by this Diwali festival. 

I got series of messages on WhatsApp. I decided to stay away from Social Media as it'd be filled with the festive posts. I'm not interested to check out how others are celebrating festival as I'm interested to celebrate the festival in my own way. What do Diwali mean to me? At certain age, I had certain notions of Diwali. Till I turned 13, Diwalis meant crackers, gifts and sweets. I always looked forward for the nights. As siblings began to move out and festivals no more felt like festivals, I wondered what are festivals for. Slowly with inclusion of environment into the festive picture, I slowly lost interest in crackers and never picked them after that. 

I do not remember how I celebrated Diwali during my college days. I hardly had any interest in festivals during those times. 

These days, this are the highlights of my festival. 

Sleep without Alarm

For once, I switched off the alarm and slept whenever I felt sleepy and woke up whenever I felt awake. Sometimes I slept 12 hours and sometimes I slept only 8 hours. The quality of the sleep didn't seem to be proportional with the quantity of the sleep but  matters a lot with the timing when I fall asleep. If I'm sleeping around 2 am and waking up at 12PM. I got 12 hours of sleep but I don't feel much active.

Reading Time

In an year, I make sure I have days where I do nothing except picking a book and reading it all day. These days were the same. As soon as I get up, I freshen up a bit and catch up with the books I picked to read. I finished Cuckold, Conversation with Friends, began Till Death Do Us Apart, The Ivory Throne & Body Keeps the Score.

I'm happy with the  pace I have regarding reading. Other than reading, I  paint a bit whenever I feel like. 

Painting Time

This time I'm trying to spend more time on one piece rather than create various pieces in short span of time. Spending more time on drawing, painting is helping me to focus more and be mindful of my practice rather than venting out emotions intensely. 

Cooking at  Home

Cooking seemed to be fun when there's so much time to spend at home. I enjoyed making atleast one meal a day at home. I cooked chicken once and someother times, poha, tomato rice and some other dishes. I'm enjoying cooking as it has a lot to do with the colors, texture and the process. I'm enjoying the aromas, texture of vegetables and  all the process that goes on with cooking. I may not enjoy this if someone asks me to do it daily. As I have a lot of time in hand, I'm enjoying these.