Diwali and Kali Puja and the auspicious fourteen candles and greens

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November 3, 2013

Diwali or the festival of lights, seems to have become the symbol of Indian festivals in the US. I want to write this post to share a little Bengali perspective on the festival. It is called Kali Puja in Eastern India where I am from. Along with the sweets and candles, there are a few unique rituals incorporated into Kali Puja.

How we celebrate Kali Puja/Diwali the Bengali Way

Destivals more often than not, are jostled between soccer and other weekend chores. That is life as we know and love it (~~ok, I made up the love part!~~)

Bengalis celebrate the festival of Kali Puja, with at least fourteen candles. This is symbolic. The fourteen lamps or choddo prodeep are for fourteen ancestors, seven from each side of the family. This is very typical of a lot of Hindu celebrations. We think of the departed and pray for them before we move on to the ceremonies of the current.

One of my last memories of Kali Puja with my father is just us. It is a trip to India, when my mother needed to have surgery.

One day my father announced we should have fifteen candles instead of the fourteen. The fifteenth according to my father should be kept in the memory of people without children.

This was classic Dad, always thinking of others in his own little way. So, to remember his thoughts, we light fifteen candles with the last one just a little away.

However, we make sure that it is prettier that the others, or at least distinct in some way. (Of course, the children have decided that this symbolizes the cat’s ancestor’s – I guess whatever works!)

Now we move onto the more tricky business of the fourteen greens, which is also traditional fare for the festival. It is usually fun to gather these greens on the morning of Kali Puja. I have always been skeptical about finding fourteen greens in our garden, especially since this is a fading time of the year. But, this year, I ventured and this is what I came up with.

So, the chives, especially the garlic chives and the regular chives have been a lot of fun for us, this year and we have enjoyed them in many ways. It only makes sense that we close out the garden with these beauties as a religious offering.

While they are very different in their flavor, it is difficult to tell them apart. The garlic chives have slightly broader leaves and when flowering, they have white flowers as opposed to the purple ones.

Then I ventured into the veggies section, a lot of the fall vegetables have lovely edible greens.To this mix came the radish greens, with their pretty curly leaves and sharp and mustard like flavor notes.

To get to the magic number, I snipped some carrot tops as well. These are feathery and I am not terribly fond of them, so I had just a symbolic amount to add to the mix.

To make up for the sparse amounts of carrots, I added generous amounts of my favorite beet greens, these added some lovely color to the mix. If you are a regular blog reader, you know these colorful beauties are very popular on my table.

Now moving onto the sharper greens, I had a nice helping of turnip greens, these greens are nice and remind me to mustard greens. They often compliment and co-exist with my radish greens.

Moving on from spicy, there is a nice touch of bitterness from the dandelion greens. A Bengali melange would be incomplete without a touch of the bitter.

The spinach in our garden, is the New Zealand variety, a little more robust and well suited for the New York fall. I used a fairly decent amount of these to round out the flavors.

The feather pale green sage,is another one that grows in gay abandon and fills our garden and table with lots of sage like goodness, so it was ready to join the party.

With mint and sage joining the fun and finally wrapped up with chard.

In case, you are wondering what happens with these greens they are actually all chopped up and sauteed with mustard oil, salt, red chilies and some Bengali Five Spice. As, I often say the fun of traditions is often just digging them up and savoring the moment. It was a lot of fun to relearn the garden on a beautiful autumn day.