What makes us fast during Navratri?
What makes us over eat during Diwali?
It is not about will power. It is not about habits.
It is a little about what is in the air and a lot about how we look at food. About our relationship with food.
If it was just not possible for us physically, to control eating, how do we fast without any compulsion for 9 days? It’s just that if we really want to do it, we do it. Relatives, friends, neighbors are also fasting…this helps.
Somehow many of us consider Navratri period as a period of strength. Some feel, the Devi makes us strong enough to do it. Some feel, we should do it and so manage to do it to keep up the tradition. Some also fear some harm coming to them if the days are spent eating as usual.
Whatever our reason, the fact remains that –
We are able to do that which we understand as important and essential.
2 weeks later, comes Diwali !!
I feel Diwali is no longer a festival of light. It is more like a festival of food.
Let me get the disclaimer in place first. I am not against enjoying or celebrating the festival. Nor am I against Diwali delicacies. But I wish to set the alarm against what it does to us on a mental level.
Diwali actually acts like a mirror. A clean one. It just reflects that which is there. That which has been there all through the year. It shows how we are just waiting for an excuse to let down the guard and eat all we what, as much as we want and even force others to eat like us saying “Are Diwali Hai”
It is like we have a valid reason to behave the way we are behaving. But whom are we giving the excuse and explanation to? Who is opposing in the first place?
It is to that portion of our self that made the Navratri fasting possible. It is to our own sense of understanding that we are about to violate.
Year after year of celebrating Diwali like this, don’t you feel forced to ask WHY?
It is easy to understand if we look at it closely. It only shows a deep sense of dissatisfaction. How incomplete we feel. There is a strong inner hunger and we feel eating can satisfy that. But we fail to see that years of eating has still not satisfied us. So food is NOT the answer to feeling complete and good. Food is not the only answer to celebration.
What is the answer then? That is for each one of us to find on our own.
My job is to bring that question in focus and to point out – please leave the plate.
I feel the need to do that because I see on a daily basis what this unnecessary, abnormal eating is doing to your body. The harm it causes and the pain it gives. And all the while what you are really trying to do is just feel good. Any food that goes in the body without there being a need for it and that which has no scope of being utilized by the body creates trouble. Worse is, the indigestion and toxins that block our subtle channels of intelligence only makes us crave more of the wrong things and we end up staying on the same track going round and round, only thickening the blockage.
Breaking out of this happens, when for once we stop to think-
“Why are we eating really?”
I hope we are able to remember our Navratri, when Diwali comes along…
I hope this Diwali really brings light to our lives.
