Good food, good friends set the tone for Diwali across Metro Vancouver

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The start of this week marks the peak of the Diwali holiday and many across Metro Vancouver have been celebrating the arrival of the festival of lights by going to public events and private parties.

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“It’s technically on Monday,” said Chirag Vesuvala, co-chair of the Diwali Celebration Society.

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But over Saturday and Sunday, there were many “Diwali parties at home or you go to friends and family and have get-togethers. There’s lots of food, songs and drinks are flowing. There are card games.”

It’s socializing that requires some pacing to get through what can be an all-day affair leading into the evening, said Vesuvala.

“It’s Diwali hopping, as we call it. You go from one person’s house to another because many people will have Diwali parties and they’ll have it on the same day, so you’ll spend a few hours at so-and-so’s house and you’ll move on to the next person’s house. It’s fun. You get to eat lots of sweets and appies, basically. You’ll be pretty full and then you end up at someone’s house and have a full meal, so you have to get that appetite going again.”

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In Delta, shoppers have been coming in to pick up desserts at the Ladoo Factory, which sells Indian sweets like jalebis and ladoos.

“We’re making some fresh deliveries, and that’s about it,” said Bharbhoor Tumber, a member of the family that owns the business. “Otherwise, it’s an ‘everyone comes and picks up what they need’ type of day. They come in, pick their own sweets.”

Normally, treats are set behind a counter and staff take orders, he explained. But when people are buying for Diwali gatherings, everything is set out in the middle of the shop so customers can quickly fill up their boxes and have them weighed.

At the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre in Yaletown, Gagan Kaila and her husband watch their two young daughters, who are six- and nine-years-old, carefully pour and shape coloured rice to fill the spaces and shapes of a large rangoli design on the floor. They have joined one of several big group art projects based on a traditional Indian art form.

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“They’ve made it so interactive where the kids can have the space to literally have the whole floor,” said Kaila.

They know some young dancers from a class they used to take at Sunset Community Centre and have come to watch them perform. The day’s schedule includes performances of Bangladeshi music, classical music, Bhangra dance, Bollywood music, Bollywood dance and classical dance.

The turnout to DiwaliFest events leading up to Sunday’s grand finale at the Roundhouse was much larger than expected, said Vesuvala.

After holding virtual events for the past two years, they ended up buying many more clay diyas for the day, anticipating that families would want to bring their kids to paint them and be part of the public event, which is in its 19th year.

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“In the old days, they would fill (lamps) up with ghee or oil of some sort and put a wick in it and have them all over the house and windows. In an homage, we have these terracotta lamps that kids can paint and colour,” he said.

Local visual artist Sandeep Johal, who created the rangoli designs for the Roundhouse event, also designed the hand-sewn, warm-up jerseys that the Vancouver Canucks will wear on Monday when they play against the Carolina Hurricanes and celebrate Diwali night.

They feature the Canucks’ orca in the vibrant colours of Diwali, plus a stick-in-rink and a peacock as shoulder pads. The namebars include Punjabi and Hindi translations of the players’ names.

jlee-young@postmedia.com