This week in Gujarat Samachar UK, I focused on the time-honored tradition of Diwali preparation 🧹✨. The ritual of deep-cleaning our spaces before the festival isn’t just about tidiness; it’s a profound family affair that sets a unique, energetic mood for the whole year. This process often unearths buried treasures—old objects and clothes—that spark nostalgia, joy, and shared memories.
Read the translated article below. [read original article: click here]
Diwali work: A festival of cleaning, a pulse of culture and a journey of memories!
Diwali is a festival of lights, colours and sweets. But before all this, there is a festival, which is the real preparation for Diwali, ‘The festival of cleaning the house’. There is a saying in Gujarati, ‘First a shake, then a crack.’ Diwali cleaning is not just a broom and dustpan, this is our age-old tradition, in which along with the house, the mind and soul are also cleaned.
Here, the work of cleaning Diwali starts with a bang. No matter how many expensive companies’ cleaners and the latest equipment have come, there is nowhere like the fun of cleaning every corner with a piece of old cloth. This cleaning work starts weeks in advance. Each member of the family is assigned their own work. Dad climbs the stairs to the attic, mom unloads old utensils and bundles of clothes, and the children are assigned small and big tasks.
Actually, this cleaning is not just a job of removing dust, it is a job of putting the train of memories in gear. You go upstairs and take down things that have been gathering dust for years, and seeing the things that come out of them, you remember the old days. A friend of mine used to say that “The work of Diwali is ‘cleaning and finding diamonds in the treasure trove of memories.'” While cleaning, you find an old toy in the cupboard. A very dusty, maybe a small car without a wheel. And immediately you remember those childhood days, when you used to run around the street with this car. You remember those childhood friends with whom you used to play for hours. Then the stories of school days, games like hide and seek in the street and ‘ice-cream’ come alive in your mind again.
You find old photo albums and everyone gets together and looks at those photos. If mom and dad look young in some photos, you laugh, while in some photos, the memories of grandparents make your eyes water. These photo frames decorate the corners of the house after being cleaned again, but before that, they take us to the memories of the past.
There are many things that we have put in the attic and do not even remember. All of them come out again during Diwali cleaning. Sometimes we find an old car with a ‘remote control’, an old video game whose wire is missing somewhere. We rummage through the whole house to find it. And if the wire is found, the joy is greater than any expensive gift. In many houses, mothers and grandmothers become happy when they find old utensils. “How much we searched for that utensil, and it was lying here in the attic! Now we will clean it and use it again,” they start talking.
By the way, another important part of Diwali cleaning is to give the house a new look. The walls are painted. The old curtains are taken down and new curtains are hung. New sofa covers and pillow covers are special for Diwali, which are put on the sofa only till Labh Pancham. Often, old light fixtures are found, in which some bulb or LED has broken somewhere. The joy of repairing them and reusing them is something different.
Indeed, this tradition teaches us many things. Instead of throwing away the things that we thought were useless, we reuse them. This is also a kind of ‘Vastu Shuddhi’. When we touch and clean each and every thing in the house, we also experience the energy and emotions associated with it. Every thing, wall, corner of the house seems to talk to us.
The queen of the house is considered the goddess of cleaning. It is truly a matter of pride to see the way a mother or other women of the house tidy up the entire house single-handedly. No matter how tiring this cleaning work is, there is a special satisfaction in it. When the entire house looks sparkling and clean, there is a peace in the mind.
Diwali is the festival of light. And this light should come from within, not from outside. Cleaning the house is part of the process of brightening our lives. Just as we make room for new things by removing old and useless things, in the same way, we make room for new thoughts, hope and positivity by removing old thoughts, negativity and garbage from our minds.
Small and big conflicts often arise during this cleaning process. “Where did you throw this thing? I wanted it!” There are conversations like this. But in the end, all this provides an opportunity to work together and laugh and cry together.
During Diwali, the special dish of Mukhwas and a new set of tea cups have to be brought out from the floor. All these small traditions make our culture more beautiful. During this cleaning process, we give old toys to children and say, “If I used to play with this.” In this way, we pass on our traditions and childhood memories to the new generation.
Finally, cleaning Diwali is not just about cleaning the house, but also about cleaning our minds and hearts. This process connects us with memories, recollections and mutual love. The festival of Diwali brings out the light around us and within us, and this cleaning is the first and most beautiful preparation to welcome that light.
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