5 min readNov 14, 2026 01:28 PM IST First published on: Nov 14, 2026 at 01:28 PM ISTAs the excitement of Diwali begins to settle, little reminders of the celebrations are still around us: The flower garlands hanging outside homes, some beginning to wilt, and the fairy lights that still come alive as evening falls. I can see them blinking through the curtains on my window even as the rest of my room is dark.It is these little things that make a festival linger with us long after the celebrations have begun to wind down. And as I look at them, I find myself thinking about the things that have come to define the festival for us. Is it the lights that brighten our homes, the colours of rangoli, the sounds of celebration, or the exchange of sweets and gifts?AdvertisementAlso Read | Notes from an empty office after DiwaliSpeaking of gifts, this year I received a rather unusual one: A hamper of brownies and cookies. As I sat enjoying the treats, I realised something was missing. There was no box of soan papdi.The missing box seemed surprising, considering the place this sweet occupies in our Diwali celebrations. Over the years, soan papdi has acquired a notorious reputation as a Diwali special. It gets exchanged between households, sometimes making its way back to the person who first bought it. We often joke and complain about it. Yet I sometimes feel that soan papdi has become part of our larger festive culture.As I sat with the brownies and cookies on my plate, taking bite after bite, I kept wondering if I was cheating on Soan Papdi. I love brownies and cookies, but the absence of that one box bothered me. I couldn’t quite understand why I was so invested in missing a sweet I had spent years making fun of. When had I become so attached to it?AdvertisementGrowing up in an Army family meant moving from one part of the country to another, encountering different people, traditions and ways of celebrating festivals. There was always something new to experience and learn. Yet, amid all these celebrations, one ritual remained the same wherever we lived: Kali Pujo. My mother made sure we observed it in the way we did back in our village in West Bengal, whether we were at a station or had travelled home for the occasion. The day began with fasting, followed by the puja late into the night. There would be plenty of food prepared for us to eat afterwards. That is how I remember the festival: The rituals, the anticipation of the puja, and, of course, the food.An ordinary call from my mother on this particular morning left me puzzled. Ma asked me to buy a broom as it was the auspicious day of Dhanteras. She told me that everyone in the neighbourhood in our little town in West Bengal was buying something or the other. Apparently, a broom was among the things people bought on Dhanteras. I found the conversation amusing. I don’t remember Dhanteras being part of our celebrations. I certainly don’t remember buying something new for the house on that particular day.you may likeHere I was, in my own apartment, far away from my village, holding on to the traditions I had learnt from my mother. I had made sure there was alpona, the traditional Bengali floor design made with soaked and ground rice. I had also prepared fourteen little diyas for Choddo Prodeep from the mud we had collected from nearby fields. Yet I was also wondering why my box of soan papdi hadn’t arrived, while my mother was reminding me to buy a broom for a festival I didn’t remember celebrating in quite this way.As I happily reached for another brownie, I found myself wondering if I had somehow strayed from the traditions I had grown up with. What are traditions, anyway? Was I supposed to stick to my Kali Pujo, the one my mother had carried with her from station to station, and leave it at that? Or could I make room for the unfamiliar, even if it meant finding myself looking forward to a brownie while missing a box of Soan Papdi?It is interesting that so much of what we consider part of our traditions and culture has found its way to us from elsewhere. We encounter these things through neighbours, gifts and the everyday things we see around us. Perhaps traditions are not so fragile that a broom or a cookie can break them. We embrace these things so completely that they begin to feel as though they have always been ours. That, I think, is the innocence of it. I don’t know when soan papdi became something I would miss, or when buying a broom became part of the Dhanteras conversation in my mother’s town. I only know that this Diwali, I found myself looking for a box that never arrived, even as I happily finished the brownies.Mohanta is a Delhi-based writer