Laxmi Puja

I think Laxmi Puja must be my favourite Nepalese festival. It is celebrated on the third day of Deepawali / Diwali and it always find place on a new (no) moon day.  One can celebrate it without inviting millions of friends. Well, that is just my thing. I like simplicity. After all the crowdiness of Dashain, I can really enjoy a ‘quiet’ day as Laxmi Puja. Of course, the nicest part of it all are all the lighted candles, it just underlines the simplicity.

Another important aspect of Laxmi Puja is that your house should be spotlessly clean. Because the goddess would only visit clean houses and bring prosperity and wealth to its inhabitants. Of course, our house wasn’t freakishly clean. However, every bit helps so we made sure that all the dishes were done before we could start the ritual. At least the kitchen looked clean

Further,  I know that for religious rituals you need to have pitchers and little cans with water in it, offers and so on.  However we do not have any of those. I know that if my husband’s grandmother ever would attend a ritual performed by my husband over here, she would scold him that he isn’t doing it on the correct way.  In our defence, we did have flowers, fruits as offer and tika powder.  Furthermore, we had hundreds of candles lighted. Of course, it’s easier to go and buy candles in a shop and to come home and light them.  In Nepal, a kind of oil lights are lighted on this event. These oil lights (diyas) were home-made by my husband’s grandmother and she spends a reasonable amount of time on rolling the cotton wicks and dipping them oil.  His grandmother is really great and she will be happy to see the pictures we took for Laxmi Puja. But I can see her thinking: ” Hmm, where is this or that?” And the next time my husband visits Nepal, she will probably give him something else that is necessary for worshiping the gods. Previous year, she gave him a little Ganesha statue, because she found that he had too less of divine statues to pray towards. I will be curious what we will get next year.

Finally, to end this post, I know that I haven’t been blogging regularly because I was caught up with my thesis and work and all the other boring stuff. But I can happily tell you know that I have passed my master’s thesis that dealt about Nepal and sustainable peace. That doesn’t intend that I have more free time because I am job hunting and since September I am following once a week Hindi lessons.  So much fun.