Diwali is a Hindu holiday, which makes it more popular in the north than down here. There are still plenty of Hindus here, but it isn’t quite as concentrated–lots of Muslims and... miscellaneous. I’m also in a relatively calm neighborhood. Which made it all the more surprising to experience five hours of war noises throughout Koramangala. Seriously, this place sounded like the footage you got from reporters embedded in the Iraq War. Distant explosions, constant rat-tat-tat-tat-tats, and the occasional close BOOM! From what I could tell, nobody was really interested in the bright, shiny fireworks. This was really more about the loud stuff and blowing things up. This made me assume Diwali was a celebration of the time Lakshmi blew open a diamond mine.
Diwali is one of dozens of holidays in India. As you can see, there’s basically a holiday at least once a week, year-round: http://www.thisismyindia.com/nationalholidays.html. But that’s only part of the story, as there are tons more religious holidays, which are observed in some states but not others, and trying to figure out exactly when your business may be closed is quite a task: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_India. For example, Nov. 1 was Karnataka Day, the state’s celebration of itself. Some people observed this, but not all, so my first day in our office space was me alone. Compare this to Diwali, when the office was locked. The day after Diwali, though, is also some sort of Holiday, which was observed by Citibank, but only Karnataka Citibanks, which created some problems for Sanju. Neither of us can explain this, because this wasn’t Karnataka Day, this was a Hindu holiday, which supposedly wasn’t a big deal in this state. Are you confused yet? I sure am. I figure this is only about as confusing as trying to explain Casimir Pulaski Day to someone from outside Illinois, though, so I can’t totally fault the Indians as backwards on this one.
Anyway, the general system is that everyone takes off the three national holidays, while the rest of the holidays are sort of hit or miss. Spin the wheel and see if a particular business is closing for a particular holiday. Or just hope that that business dealt with it by having a diverse enough employee pool that they can absorb some off-days. Sorta like how we have Jewish doctors to work on Christmas. I think India probably does pretty well with that. Citibanks may have been closed today, but most stores were open even yesterday, with reduced hours. And of course Sanju’s Muslim maid came. We’ll see what she does when Eid al-Fitr rolls around
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