Cranberry Area Diversity Network members create art to celebrate Diwali
The inside of the Cranberry Township Municipal Center was notably more colorful than usual on Tuesday night, as members of the Cranberry Area Diversity Network worked to assemble a traditional Indian piece of art called a rangoli to celebrate the holiday of Diwali.
Also called Deepavali, the holiday, known as the “Festival of Lights,” is celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains across the world for five days in October or November, based on the lunar calendar. The holiday commemorates the victory of good over evil.
Festival celebrations involve lighting rows of lamps, or diyas, to symbolize the triumph of light over darkness. People celebrate the holiday by spending time with family and friends, cleaning their homes, decorating with diyas and rangoli and worshiping the goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.
Members of the diversity network gathered at the municipal center with powder, flower petals, and chalk to create the public art display, which symbolized beauty, hope and tradition. Festive snacks and sweets were also available to try.
Srujana Kanjula, with the diversity network, said the event was meant to introduce people to the holiday. The group holds other events in the township, including CranFest in the spring, during which people and performing groups share cultural performances, food, activities and information.
“(We want to) spread awareness about Diwali, because people want to know what it is,” she said. “It’s being celebrated even in the United States.”
Diwali is celebrated in different ways in different parts of the Indian subcontinent and across the world, Kiran Cherlakola of the diversity network said.
“Whenever you ask any person from the subcontinent, they’ll give you different answers, because we all have different cultures, because we come from different states,” Cherlakola said. “We speak different languages. You’ll get different answers.”
This year, the lunar calendar lines up with Oct. 25 being the high point of the celebration. The day marks a new year for a lot of the business community, she explained.
“It’s different for different communities,” she said. “This is our biggest festival. It’s like Christmas — that's the only thing I can compare. It’s usually a harvest festival too for farmers, with the crops coming home.”
In the United States, families often gather together to celebrate Diwali on the weekend after the festival, Cherlakola said. Rangoli like the one made in the center of the Cranberry Municipal Center are meant to welcome visitors into the home, as well as welcome the goddess of wealth, Lakshmi.
Typically, rangoli are made outside the threshold of the main entrance. Diwali often falls in November, during rainy and cold weather, so it isn’t always possible to make a rangoli outside at home.
“In the houses, you don’t want to use all of this powder, because it’s going to get messy, and everybody will stamp on it. You’re not supposed to put your feet on it,” she said. “What we do is we do it with rose petals, and just do a little bit in a small place. You just don’t want to do elaborate designs like this. For this, I tried to make it big, but in my house in the front, on the day that people are coming, I just do a quick small one, so that at least when they come in they see that they’re being welcomed into the house.”
Turmeric and vermilion powders, which are yellow and red respectively, are often used in rangoli. There are thousands of possible patterns, Cherlakola said.
“People really spend a lot of time doing that, if they enjoy it. It’s like art, and it’s creative, and there’s mathematics involved in it,” Cherlakola said. “I like that part of it. My family, especially my grandmothers, they were educated, but if I see in my community, none of them were educated, and they would put 11-by-11 dots or whatever pattern was in their mind, they would put it out. You just need to give credit for that. They come up with all these things.”
