Divali, India’s 5-day Hindu national festival starts today!

Incredibly, India has over 140 public holidays! No surprise here, with its multiplicity of gods, goddesses & fests.

As we say of Ile-Ife, each day a feast!

So, how do people get to be productive at all.

A thread!

Only about 16 are what’s called gazetted holidays; the usual ones; new year, Christmas, Eid & Sikh, Hindu main observances.

Because it’s a federation of states, apart from these 16, additional 3 are selected per state, according to the local culture. These are changed annually.

In addition, each employee is allowed to select 2 more holidays from the long list of optional holidays to satisfy personal devotions.

If an employee has to fulfill more devotional obligations, he’s allowed another 2 without pay.

Back to Divali, it is one of the 14 compulsory.

Also called the Festival of Lights, Diwali or Dipvawali, per dialect, it marks the spiritual victory of light over darkness, of one of Hindu’s main gods.

A joyous but cacophonous festival, it starts with solemn temple activities & prayers. Funny, most don’t participate in these!

The subsequent days are the real fun celebration featuring bright light decorations & plenty of fire works & crackers.

My first experience of Divali met me in the small town of Vijawada in Andhra Pradesh, SE India.

The first 2 days were ok. Beautiful decorations & fireworks displays.

Subsequently; a bit too much. Almost round the clock, t’was fireworks at night, crackers in the day; on such terrible scale, air quality dips significantly in the period.

One Divali’s good, 2 is too much!

Another interesting festival is an optional holiday. I happened upon it once in Delhi.

Was suddenly confronted by a large crowd of a couple hundred people all bearing tall stalks of sugarcane. Was so sure we had driven into a violent riot. Only the blissful faces reassured me.

India’s public holiday policy & practice is complex, even more than I’ve shown but works for most.

There’s plenty in it we can learn from, especially as we begin to confront & better manage our diversity as a nation.

Happy Divali to all my Indian friends & associates.

Finis!