The Diwali Table

Diwali, the festival of lamps, falls on the new-moon night of the Hindu month of Kartika, in October or November, and is kept across India by Hindus, Jains and Sikhs, each for their own reasons. The table that belongs to it is not one table but many, shaped by region, caste, community and the household's own custom: a Gujarati home, a Bengali one, a Punjabi one and a Tamil one will each lay out a different feast on the same night. What they share is the season. Diwali comes after the monsoon and the autumn harvest, when new rice, pulses and fresh produce are in the house, and the festival has long been marked by cooking, sweetmaking and the giving of food to neighbours and kin.

The Diwali table is best understood as a sequence of occasions rather than a single meal. In the days before the festival, the kitchen is given over to preparation: sweets are made and fried savouries are put up in tins, so that anyone who calls during the festival may be offered something at once. These are dry, keeping foods, made in quantity because they are meant to be given away as much as eaten. Among them are laddu of gram flour or semolina, barfi of milk solids and sugar, and gujiya, the fried pastry parcel filled with sweetened khoya, nuts and coconut that belongs to northern kitchens. Savouries such as chakli, sev and mathri sit beside them, the salt set against the sugar. The main meal on the night itself is, for many households, a vegetarian one, and a festive one in the sense that it is more elaborate than the everyday. Where the family keeps to the custom, the thali is laid with several vegetable dishes, a dal, rice or fried breads such as puri, a raita or kadhi, pickle and a sweet taken alongside rather than held to the end. The weight of the meal lies in the variety of small dishes rather than in one great centrepiece, and the cook's task is to bring them to the table together and in balance. Anita Jaisinghani, writing in Masala from the Gujarati tradition of her own family, treats the festive table in this spirit: generous, vegetable-led, and built on the contrast of sweet, sour, salt and heat across the plate. Sweets carry the particular meaning of the festival. They are offered first before the household's lamps and images, then shared, and the exchange of boxes between families is among the settled customs of the season. Milk sweets, being perishable and costly, are the mark of hospitality, while the sugar-and-flour sweets that keep for days are the working stock of the fortnight. Ghee is the fat of the festival in the north and west, and its use in frying and in sweetmaking is part of what makes the food festive rather than ordinary. Regional difference is the rule. In much of the north the night is marked with kheer, puri, paneer dishes and seasonal vegetables; in Bengal Diwali coincides with Kali Puja, and the table follows that observance; in the south the festival is kept in the early morning with an oil bath, followed by a breakfast of sweets and savouries, and the lamp-lit evening is a lesser meal. Jain households keep the table within the rules of their own diet, and Sikh households observe the day as Bandi Chhor Divas, with the langar and the sharing of food at the gurdwara central to it. A cook who sets out to prepare a Diwali table should therefore ask first whose Diwali it is, and let the household's custom decide the menu.

The flavour of the Diwali table is built on contrast: the sweetness of milk, sugar and ghee set against salted fried savouries, sharp pickles, yoghurt and the gentle heat of the vegetable dishes. Cardamom, saffron, nuts and rose or kewra water scent the sweets, while cumin, coriander, asafoetida Ferula assa-foetida and green chilli carry the savoury dishes. Ayurvedic tradition counts some of these foods heating or cooling and serves them accordingly at the turn of the season, and the richness of the festive table is understood as a custom of celebration rather than of everyday eating.