Ummm….nopes. That’s the cute look. I thought we were going for scary.
So, it’s Halloween. Kids go from house-to-house and get sweets and treats, and for the first time, I saw it being celebrated in Pune (with my kid taking enthusiastic part…after all, which child wouldn’t like a festival where random strangers give them candy, and their parents allow them to do so). But is there an Indian counterpart?
Interestingly, yes. My daughter’s Nepali heritage provides an exact parallel and that too, during Tihar, or Diwali/Deepawali, as it is known in the rest of India. It is the tradition of ‘Deusi‘ or ‘Bhailo‘, in which groups of young people go from door-to-door singing and asking for food and drink, and it is as much fun as Halloween (the original door-to-door collection of ‘soul cakes’ was called ‘souling‘ because they were given against a promise to pray for dead souls). Indeed, even Christmas sees travelling groups of youngsters singing carols.
In mainstream Hinduism, the travelling monks and ascetics sometimes sang or chanted as they reached various homes where they expected food (usually dry stuff) from. In Maharashtra, we have the ‘Vasudev‘ tradition, where a resplendently dressed folk singer would come around every morning, and do the whirling dance in front of the homes of people and call for alms.
Buddhism and Jainism have similar traditions. I’d love to know if Sikhism and Islam too have something like this.
Here, in the attached film, is a group of boys in October 2016, when we were vacationing in Sikkim, who came to our cottage door at midnight to sing ‘Deusi Re’ and wouldn’t leave until we gave them bottles of rum! They are telling us how far they have come to do this and how we should ‘deusi re‘ (give them food), how much they fought with their loved ones to come so far, and how we should ‘deusi re‘. It was an absolute joy. Enjoy!
