Celebrate a Silent & Green Diwali

Every year for Diwali, it’s the same old routine – gorge on sweets, spend outrageous amounts on gifting and decorating… but becoming parents made us start questioning our original beliefs, attitudes, and values, it made us re-think the way we celebrated Diwali. We wanted to do something more fulfilling.

Our main motive was to save our infant from the traumatic noise pollution that comes with Diwali – roads being blocked, loudspeakers set-up, the cacophony of noisy firecrackers continuing through the night, making festivity a public nuisance. We desperately wanted to escape this distress to celebrate a silent & green Diwali with family amidst peace & quiet, celebrating the spirit of light that had blessed our family earlier that year in the form of our baby girl, Noor…!

We took a two-hour drive to an old farmhouse called Hideout, managed and nurtured by a lovely couple and their children.

Because the drive wasn’t too tiring, upon our arrival we set out on a trek to a waterfall, this was Noor’s first trek ever with grandpa and papa…! We also stopped for a breast milk-break en route’ in the middle of a forest.

We came back to a sensational vegan lunch made in traditional style.

After lunch, we decided to unwind and snooze as much as possible in the mud-house, handing over our newborn in the safekeeping of her nana-nani.

Come weekend or holiday, all we could think of, was to catch up on our sleep.

We went for a horse-buggy ride at Dahanu beach in the evening with our baby curled-up in our arms…

The beauty of celebrating Diwali this way was not just the sheer rustic experience but also the warmth that one gets, being amongst likeminded people.

The Diwali décor was eco-friendly, plentiful place to hang around, evening prayers, lighting diyas, eating organic, wholesome meals followed by a bon-fire at night. Alas, our batteries ran out by evening, so we couldn’t capture the nighttime festivities on camera…er!

Our diwali retreat proved to be blissfully sublime.

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