* happy diwali
Posted on October 28th, 2008 by Alex. Filed under India.
Diwali is a huge and extensively celebrated festival in India. Preparation actually start more than a month before with shops announcing special offers on their products. So if you buy a MP3 player, you get a hair dryer for free. Or buy items for more than 1lakh (around EUR2000) and get a micro wave oven for free. Buy one shoe and get the other one for the other foot free of cost. 
Then the actual festival starts. In India all kind of festivals last for more than a day. In addition sometimes even the date differs acompared to other states. For example Karnataka (a state in south India) celebrates Diwali on the 27th of October, whereas it is one day later in Andhra Pradesh. So a smart guy is probably able to celebrate a whole week by just travelling to the states, in which the festival is currently celebrated. And even these dates are not fixed. In Bangalore (which is located in Karnataka), I had two tough nights starting from Sunday, when the people started to play with fire crackers in front of my room on the street on Sunday (26th) morning 5AM.
So, enjoy the season! Happy Diwali!