In north India, Diwali is the season when the ?ghar ki Lakshmi? comes into her own. Armed with credit card, three-kg handbag and stiletto heels, she plans her shopping like a general plans his army campaigns, only rather better.
The importance of shopping eluded me until I?d spent a few years in north India. For many women, Diwali marks the time of the year when they flourish a fragile and possibly specious independence that they do not always enjoy during the rest of the year. Those in the upper income bracket can requisition cars and drivers on demand for these few days, instead of waiting for their husbands to come home from office or their mother-in-law?s second cousin?s family to finish sightseeing.
Even women from less well-off families discover that their opinions rule during Diwali, at least in the narrow sphere of what bartans and new appliances to buy for the household. And there is, truly, something for everyone. The poorest flock to the special weekday ?haats? where you can buy cheap but pretty pottery; the richest compete to buy out the malls or to pick up the most expensive saris at the various Diwali sales.
?It?s the one time I can go out without anyone saying anything,? declares a fashionably dressed young woman whom I bump into at a mall. She doesn?t look like your standard oppressed type, but as we get talking over a cup of coffee in a fit of sudden intimacy brought about by the store having given us the wrong packages, she tells a story of subtle tyranny. Without overt restrictions, she finds that her husband?s family ? conservative UP landowners ? finds ways to prevent her going out of the house the rest of the year except on carefully monitored visits. She looks forward to Diwali, when she can spend entire days on ?shopping trips? where the buying is almost secondary to meeting similarly trammelled friends.
For others, the relative freedom of Diwali shows up in strange ways. One woman I know has been trying for the last three years to time the conception of her child in such a way that the baby will arrive near Lakshmi Puja. For two years, she was unsuccessful; and for two years when her in-laws discovered she was carrying a girl, they forced her through the early abortion routine. This year, she got the timing right. In May, when she found she was carrying a girl again, she told her husband and her in-laws that the baby would arrive during Lakshmi?s festival ? it would be inauspicious to abort a potential ?ghar ki Lakshmi?. Superstition worked where equal rights didn?t; her ?Lakshmi? was born on ?chhoti Diwali?. Everyone?s happy, though the mother knows she will now be under more pressure than ever to produce a son.
In the original legends, the Goddess Lakshmi had power of her own. She made the decisions while Vishnu napped; she wields power over the richest by threatening to leave if she isn?t happy. And Lakshmi, though a bestower of fertility, retained the right to be childless. Over the years, Lakshmi?s story became tamer and tamer. As she became more domesticated, so too did the legacy she passed down to today?s women. Their freedoms have shrunk?as has the power of the Goddess worshipped during the festival of lights.
