The festival of lights Diwali
celebrates the victory of good over evil.
The lighting of diyas on a dark, moonless night signifies
the end of all things negative.
This festival, if celebrated in
the traditional sense, has little to do with fireworks. So instead of polluting the environment
with them, go ahead and celebrate a 'Green Diwali'.
Here are 10 creative ways for you
to make it an eco-friendly affair this year.
1. Do not use
electric lights to illuminate your home. Instead, opt for diyas
(earthen lamps) and candles.
This will not only reduce the amount of
electricity being consumed, the flickering diyas will look prettier too.
If you must use electric illumination, opt
for LED lights. They use at least 80 per cent lesser energy than the regular
ones and also come in various hues too.
Instead...
Get all the children of the
community to go for a nature walk the evening before and collect dry leaves,
grass, twigs etc. Then celebrate this festival of lights by lighting a bonfire
on the terrace or in an open space and serve homemade sweets and sherbet.
Fill up balloons with glitter or
small pieces of coloured paper and spend the evening bursting them, either with
your family at home or with a lot of friends.
You could even have the kids
blowing up brown paper bags and bursting them by jumping on them. The cheerful
sound will be enough to usher in Diwali.
3. In
earlier times, rangolis were made to feed the birds. This Diwali, go back to doing that.
Instead of using
artificial colours, make your rangoli with spices and other food items as follows:
- For white, use rice powder
- Yellow: Pulses or turmeric
- Brown: Cloves or cinnamon
- Green: Cardamom (chhoti elaichi) or fennel (saunf)
- Red: Dried chilly or even kumkum, if you wish
- You can even make a rangoli out of fresh flowers -- their fragrance is sure to
create the perfect festive ambience.
- You can decorate the doorway
with garlands of marigold and jasmine and set up vases of roses and
lilies. They will enhance the beauty of your house way better than the
paper streamers and artificial lights would have.
4. If
you must paint your home during Diwali, then use eco-friendly paint.
Besides, here are a few
ideas to decorate your home without having to paint it at all.
- Twist colourful saris and dupattas to create streamers. Or paint old newspapers and hang
them up as wall decorations.
- Use brocade saris or gold
embroidered dupattas as drapes and curtains instead of going on a shopping
spree.
- Use your child's leftover craft
materials like tissues, sandwich or rice paper to make paper lanterns (kandeel). You could use match sticks to form the spokes.
- Save on electricity and stop using
the doorbell for a few days. Instead, hang a bell at the door entrance and
let all visitors ring that instead. It will definitely add to the puja feeling.
- Bandanwars or traditional door hangings are the first thing that
welcomes every guest. Make these with leftover papers or bright coloured
cloth and then add glitter or paper flowers to them.
- Don't throw away any fused
incandescent bulbs. Instead, turn them into small flower vases by placing
an orchid in the centre as a decorative accessory. You can also paint them
different colours and hang them from the ceiling.
- Use organic incense sticks and
fresh flowers to create that heady fragrance that one associates with a puja. Do away with the synthetic room fresheners.
5. Although
innumerable options are available commercially, many of them come with
artificial colours and way too much sugar.
So this Diwali make your
own sweets instead, using only natural products like milk, chickpea flour (besan), coconut, jaggery, dry fruits, sugar etc and
keep them both nutritious and unadulterated.
Some of the choicest
Diwali sweets you can try making at home would be:
- Laddoos made of besan and rava (semolina)
- Barfi made of coconut and milk
- Kheer made of milk, rice and jiggery
- Shakkarpare made of flour, ghee and
sugar
- Gajar
ka halwa made of carrots and milk
