Diwali in Birgunj ,Nepal

Diwali .. the festival of lights in Birgunj...
Diwali is celebrated all over by most Hindus in south Asia. I was in BIrgunj,Nepal in 2009 during the festival time. Preparations began a week before. Schools were unofficially closed a couple of days earlier than the schedule days. Market place started filling up with stuff people buy. The vendors sold earthen lamps, clothes, vessels, account books , serial lights, flowers , colourful rangoli powder, plastic garlands, Crackers, Gods photos and images to almost everything. Of course the vegetable , fruit and sweets shops were brimming with goods. For many this was the last chance to earn money for the year.
On the festival day, ie., lakshmi pooja, I walked along the streets in the morning. There were a lot of buyers and sellers. There was lot of bargaining as people shopped for flowers. Nepal could not meet the demand locally and had to import flowers worth crores from India !
In the evening the whole scene had changed. Not a vendor except for the occasional cracker seller. Birgunj never looked so clean! People seemed to have taken owe not to spit!!??Every shop front was thoroughly washed , decorated with rangoli and banana shoots. Earthen lamps were aesthetically placed, Electric serials ran down from the buildings top!It all looked like a fairy land! Enthusiastic shop owners young and old lit the lamps and waited for the Pandit to come and consecrate the pooja. They burnt crackers flouting all safety rules. Police men stood passively. But it was a surprise !Not a woman in the shop or on the street!! All the merry that was happening was for men only. I wondered where the women were and what could they be doing.
As I walked along little children stopping at lamps on the pavements , not being watched by the owners, caught my eyes! On close watch, I found them to be rag pickers blowing off the lamps and pouring the oil into a bottle!! Festivals and the rituals are a source of livelihood in so many different ways! There is a system in all these which people make use of in some way or the other. Well ,it might not be egalitarian ( which system in the world is?) A change in one of the practice leads to a series of change which brings about another system in place!!