Diwali and Deepavali - where to see the lights and taste the food

 Monday October 24th is a national holiday in Singapore and many other countries - in fact some businesses give their employees the whole week off. 

Seeing The Lights In Singapore and Worldwide

In Singapore the street lights in Little India have been up since September and will continue until November. Naturally India has lots of lights, including illuminated buildings.

Street lights in Little India, Singapore.

In Singapore in 2022 I took photos of the lights near Farrer Park MRT station near the 24 hour department store, Mustafa's, which has a large food section and is a good place to find Indian foods.

Singapore has a huge number of Toastmasters International clubs which train speakers and attract people who want to improve their English. The majority are English speaking clubs but there are also some Tamil and bilingual Tamil and English clubs. 

Delicious Indian Sweets

In previous years at Toastmasters clubs the Indian members have brought along Indian sweets (called mithai), often boxes of sweet balls, or flat diamond shapes in different colours, sometimes with almonds or ground nuts, often cashew, rather like marzipan.  

Indian sweets.

Look for them sold in the Indian shops in Little India.

Indian Savoury Biscuits

The spiral savoury biscuit is on the far right. At the six o clock position is a samosa.

During the previous weekend on Saturday I was at the speech contest for Division S held at the AIA American Insurance Association building. The food at the interval included a large transparent jar containing savoury biscuits, coiled, a bit like pretzels, with small points projecting up. They were very dry and crunchy, hard to bite into, like frozen nuts. I was afraid for my teeth! I regret not taking a photo. 

Dinner Guest's Gifts

I was invited to a Deepavali dinner on Sunday but it was cancelled because a member of the host family had Covid-flu symptoms. I had been wondering what to take as a guest, because one member of the host family was diabetic. Savoury biscuits would have been an alternative for those who cannot take sugar.

Questions & Research On Diwali

On Sunday I was online in a hybrid meeting of one of the five Toastmasters clubs of which I am a member, Braddell Heights Advanced. I was the Table Topics Master in charge of producing slides with questions for the impromptu speech session, where each person has to speak for one to two minutes on a topic which is occasionally still picked from questions on cards face down on a table, but in hybrid and online meetings nowadays frequently a slide show of questions. 

I did some research. 

The lights. Individuals and groups such as clubs send members and friends greetings for festivals such as Diwali. For Diwali they often feature lamps.

Oil lamps.

The coloured patterns on floors. Called Rangoli.

The stories.

Festival Information For Children

A quick guide to festivals for children is Home For The Holidays, which you can buy from Amazon. The book is a Sesame Street rhyming book, covering Chinese New Year, Christmas, Diwali, Eid-al-Fitr, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year. Read the reviews.

Useful Websites

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali

Book on Holidays

https://www.amazon.sg/dp/1728240247/ref=emc_b_5_i

Chinese New Year Lights in Chinatown Singapore

 

Photo by Trevor Sharot. More pictures shortly 

Trevor is active on this page about Covid worldwide.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2672593926320374

About the Author

Angela Lansbury teacher of English (advanced and English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language, French and other languages, aspiring polyglot.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Member of many toastmasters  speaker training clubs and speaking contest judge.

Angela Lansbury, the author of 20 books including Wedding Speeches & Toasts, and Quick Quotations, has lived in the USA, Spain and Singapore. 

She  has several blogs and writes daily on at least two of the following:

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

 Please share links to your favourite posts.

English tea time: cucumber, white and brown bread, high tea

Sitting down to tea, after reading books about how people live in other times and other countries, you may feel that you are leading a relatively uneventful life. Yet the tea table before you has links to other eras and other countries, or contrasts with what you have experienced previously.

Outside the window of the room where I had tea recently, at a friens new home, I enjoyed seeing every room of the house, especially the kitchen. I looked out at the back garden with the lawn, contrasting with the front driveway of many houses in the street, covered in to allow car parking. I had previously taken a tour of the house, en route to the downstairs cloakroom. Now I looked out of the kitchen window, admiring the long lawn at the back of the house.

In Medieval times you had a meadow with grass and colourful perfumed flowers. Along came lawn tennis. Then lawn mowers. So in Victorian times, in a large house with a grassed lawn, you might watch croquet or clock golf or cricket played on the field or lawn.

Afterwards, in mid-afternoon, as either owner of the property, or a guest you ate cucumber sandwiches on white bread for tea. Tea was a meal between luncheon and dinner.

In the North of England in winter you came home when it got dark and cold. Electric lights in and around the house were installed in various years, as you can check, along with street lighting. Your local library will tell you about street lighting in your nearest city, town or village.

How can you find out? When writing about an ancestor of mine who lived in the East End of London in my novel I struggled to find out. The electric lights in the USA were better documented on the web than the lighting in London.

If you go to the North of England and Scotland you can still get High Tea. This is a half way meal combining tea and a snack supper. You start with savoury and end with sweet, maybe start with hot and end with cold, such as a grill or sandwiches or toast with something on top followed by cold cakes or if you prefer, hot pancakes.

Tea Time
Some schools and old people's homes would and still do serve a High Tea or early supper, at 5.30 or six o'clock. Meals get later as you go further south. In Europe, the latest would be the 9 pm or 10 pm meal in a restaurant in Spain.

It was easier to send the hero of my novel on a trip to another city, where his relatives were excited about the new lighting, than to leave him in London, where he might have been in the dark, at least the novel's author was in the dark.

Lights
Maybe the records of the electric light companies, the sales of light bulbs and records or household expenses will also give you a clue as to whether your ancestors or the people who used to live in your house had candles, gas light, or electric lights in the city or home.

Lighting up times, dawn and dusk, will affect the working day, the building of a house, school finishing time (allowing time for children to walk home, before the universal bus routes). You are cold and tired and hungry, or hot and tired and hungry, when you arrive home after a long walk (even costume drama ladies walking for a chat or riding a horse might be tired.

In Singapore at a Eurasian club we were served hot in both senses, curried food. In India it would be rice in the north. In China you would have rice in the north, noodles in the south. Back to Singapore, majority Chinese, but the Eurasian club was for Indians or rather mostly ex-past British or other white men with their exotically dressed Indian wives, who presumably liked curry (as did nay grandfather in London who died in 1950 - never went to India as far as I know and alas it's now too late to ask my late parents or y grandparents how he acquired this taste. Maybe Queen Victoria had made curry popular in his youth. Does anybody know?

The Eurasian club served me sandwiches using white bread. They serve whatever the organisers ask for, which might be savoury food followed by cold cake or biscuit or the modern substitutes, crisps and nuts and nibbles.

Back in London, I enjoy tea with my book group friends. They are mostly ladies (some of them belong to several book groups, at least two, sometimes three groups). Occasionally this group is joined by a husband, author, or retired gentleman has the time and inclination to read the latest price-winning book and offer a verdict. We have a mix of shop-bought and home catering.

My previous post describes the 'bridge rolls'. The afternoon's hostess told us they were not bridge rolls, but better than bridge rolls, less heavy, less bready, more light and more moist. I took a picture of the wrapper. I thought it was easier to give another family member the wrapper when they went shopping, and easier for them or me to show to a shop assistant. Weeks later the wrapper picture is still on my computer, whereas a name written on a scrap of paper would disappear.

The rolls are called Mini White Submarine Rolls. The white ones look more like the traditional bridge roll. They come in packs of eight which will make 16 half pieces, enough to fill one long oblong plate. We had a mixture of brown and white rolls, which adds visual appeal.

Angela Lansbury, author, researcher, speaker.

Street Lights in North West London: Hatch End, North Harrow, Stanmore, Watford

Here are the lights in 2015

In alphabetical order:

Harrow Lights


Hatch End Lights
See displays on lamp standards; and in the entrance of Fellini restaurant ;and the window of Bella's blooms. Decorated Christmas Cakes in the window of Genuine Cakes.

Tree and reindeer in the entrance to Fellini restaurant and Caffe.

North Harrow Lights
To be added. Friends, families, foes, strangers , shop keepers, restaurant owners, tourist boards, councils - anybody who has photos please send them to me. Add any option or credit you would like me to use.

Northwood Lights

Stanmore Lights and decorations 2015
Summer flowers in flower boxes on the railings and a winter tree with a five point star on top.

Stanmore street lights on lamp postsDriving from the station to the High Street approaching Prezzo restaurant on the leftStanmore street lights large white stars

More stars strung across the Stanmore shopping areas.

Watford Lights Inside Intu shopping mall 2015
White palm tree tops on columns. Very effective.

More pictures in my previous posts about Intu lights and Santa's Grotto in Intu.

Wembley Stadium Arch 2015
Lit at night, usually in white all year. Was decorated with the red white and blue of the French flag in honour of the French after the Paris bombing and in honour of visiting teams.
1 The arch can be see in Wembley; also from stations and in transit on the Metropolitan railway line, overground section, between Harrow and Baker Street.
2 Also when walking along the road on the pavement on the Morrisons side over the bridge over Hatch End station.
3 Also from Stanmore, driving towards Grimsdyke hotel or parking at the public car park opposite Grimsdyke Hotel, next to the pub.
4 Probably from many other places with views over London, such as hilltops in public parks, or high buildings such as malls, offices or blocks of flats overlooking London. Let me know of any places or public viewpoints you recommend.

If you have any photos of shops or shopping malls or high streets anywhere in the world which you wish to share, please send them to me.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
All photos by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Street Lights in Hatch End and Stanmore High Street Tree

Residents, shoppers and shopkeepers seemed to be in some doubt as to whether Hatch End would have street lights this year. Other streets had decorated lamp posts and trees. What had happened in Hatch End?

The word went round that the money was not forthcoming. That nobody had asked, nobody had organised it, because some shops had gone out of business and new people did not know anything about street lights or what to do.

Magically this week the lights appeared on the lamps.

Rumours and questions are still going around, but this time, on a more cheerful basis. I wondered why lights could not simply be stored from previous years? A former shop owner told me:
The tree costs a few thousand, the lights cost a few thousand. Somebody has to take time getting the promises and collecting the money. You can't keep the lights because you still need somebody to put them up. So you hire them from the rental company who put them up and take them down. I'm not climbing up a lamp post. Are you?

Somebody else said, 'Surely the council sends around a team to erect streets lights? Isn't it a question of health and safety? They must already have all the cranes for changing light bulbs and dealing with fallen trees and lamp posts. Don't they do the lights in every high street.'

Then I thought: I took a photo last year of the people erecting the trees and lights. I have a picture showing the equipment with the name of whoever does it.

Finding Old Photos
I just have to search for street lights, or Hatch End, and I'll find the pictures. Or go back through each December.

I looked at my photos from last year. No luck. I'll have to do a search of previous years. That means going back to archived photos. Until you come to write a blog, you have no idea how much time it takes to add pictures. It's quickest to put up pictures immediately after you have taken them. Then you can remember the places and people and caption them easily. Edit the one of several you have taken. Remove the ones where people have closed their eyes, waved their hands in the air creating blur, walked in front of the camera. or signs are obscured by a passing bus. Somewhere I have a picture which I edited and captioned. Pictures will be placed here within 48 hours. Come back.

Hatch End has no tree this year. But a tree is in nearby Pinner, near the war memorial, across the road from St John's Church, at the top of the road going uphill left of the station, from the lower end of the park with the Heath Robinson Museum.

Stanmore Winter Holiday Lights With Tree 2015

Update Dec 26 2015 - go to this post - I found the photos of putting up lights in Hatch End.


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Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.)