Bav­ina Sookdeo�

A young pun­dit said he fears that the true mean­ing of Di­vali is be­ing lost.

"Di­vali is be­com­ing too com­mer­cialised. It is sad to see that we have for­got­ten our roots and our cul­ture," Pun­dit Rishi Ojar said in an in­ter­view. "The true mean­ing of Di­vali is be­ing lost, for ex­am­ple, with prasad bags, pic­tures of Ma­ta Lak­sh­mi are be­ing print­ed on them and then they are be­ing thrown in the garbage," said the 29-year-old pun­dit.

Ojar was speak­ing in an in­ter­view about the tra­di­tions of Di­vali. One tra­di­tion he fo­cused on was the eight deyas of Di­vali.

"The deya rep­re­sents the body, the wick rep­re­sents the mind and the ghee is sym­bol­ic of love," Ojar said. There­fore, if a deya is lit with spoilt or un­healthy ghee the smoke would be very black and it shows how the mind thinks. If you have no love, the mind au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be­gins to think neg­a­tive­ly be­cause love is the fu­el of the mind.

"Di­vali is sym­bol­ic of love. Lak­sh­mi is satwick (pure) and when we go from home to home shar­ing prasad we show love. This type of love we must not on­ly show for Di­vali–show love every­day of the year."

Eight deyas of Di­vali

For Di­vali, eight deyas rep­re­sent­ing eight forms of the God­dess Lak­sh­mi called Aash­ta Lak­sh­mi are lit.

The deyas must be placed with the flame fac­ing East or North East; the de­v­tas re­side in the in East (called In­dra) and the North East (called Es­haana). Be­fore light­ing the deyas, they are placed on a be­di and one deya should be lit. This one deya will then be used to light the oth­er sev­en deyas.

Ojar ex­plained, "The wick in these deyas must com­prise of two strands. One strand is for the pitras, the an­ces­tors, and the oth­er for the de­v­tas, the Gods.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, in In­dia, gold is put in the deyas but most peo­ple put a 25 cent coin, with saf­fron and sin­door."

First deya

This first deya, sym­bol­ic of light and love, shows that one deya can light mil­lions. It is sym­bol­ic of light and love and shows that the hu­man love can spread through­out the world. This deya is used to light the oth­er deyas.

Sec­ond deya

The sec­ond is sym­bol­ic of food and is placed in the kitchen so the house­hold will be blessed with food.

Third deya

The third deya sym­bol­is­es wealth and should be placed in a taria (a ves­sel that looks like a plate made out of brass) with rice, gold and mon­ey.

Fourth deya

The fourth deya must be mon­i­tored at all times as it will be put on a bed in the main bed­room in a taria with wa­ter.

The bed and its sur­round­ings must be clean and it is meant to sym­bol­ise, "as you make your bed, so you must lie on it"

Ojar in­sist­ed. "Ma­ta Lak­sh­mi dwells every­where and for this rea­son your place must be kept clean" the pun­dit ad­vised.

Fifth deya

The fifth deya is to be placed in the bath­room.

Sixth deya

The sixth deya is for the study.

Sev­enth Deya

The sev­enth deya is for the pu­ja room.

Eighth deya

The eighth deya is to be placed at the door­way.

Ojar re­leat­ed the sto­ry about plac­ing the deya in the door­way.

"In an­cient In­dia a jew­eller was vis­it­ed one Di­vali night by Ma­ha­lak­sh­mi (the great God­dess who bless­es you with wealth and luck) and Alak­sh­mi (the old­er sis­ter of Lak­sh­mi and the Hin­du god­dess of mis­for­tune.) They asked him, "Be­tween Ma­ha­lak­sh­mi and Alak­sh­mi who is more beau­ti­ful?"

He thought to him­self, "If I say Ma­ha­lak­sh­mi is more beau­ti­ful then Alak­sh­mi would bless me with pover­ty and if I say Alak­sh­mi is more beau­ti­ful then Ma­ha­lak­sh­mi won't bless me at all."

The god­dess­es in­sist­ed that he choose one of them and the jew­eller asked them both to leave. He then asked them both to come back in­to his door­way. By this time they were both fu­ri­ous and de­mand­ed that he gave them an an­swer or they would leave and not bless him at all.

The jew­eller then said, "Ma­ha­lak­sh­mi you look beau­ti­ful when you en­ter my door­way and Alaks­mi, you look beau­ti­ful when you leave my door­way."

STO­RY OF DI­VALI

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Si­ta was Prince Ra­ma's wife and the de­mon king named Ra­vana kid­napped her in an at­tempt to make her his wife. When kid­napped, Si­ta left a trail of jew­el­ry for Ra­ma to fol­low and on his way to find his wife he met Hanu­man (the mon­key king) who helped him to find his wife. Even­tu­al­ly they found Si­ta and a mighty bat­tle was fought. With the help of all the an­i­mals in the world and Hanu­man's help, Ra­ma killed Ra­vana with a mag­ic ar­row. The en­tire world cel­e­brat­ed. On their long jour­ney back home every­one lit lamps for Ra­ma and Si­ta to wel­come them back and guide them along. Since then, deyas have been lit on Di­vali as a sym­bol of light and good over­com­ing dark­ness and evil.