{"id":110661,"date":"2017-10-27T12:10:30","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T16:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=110661"},"modified":"2021-02-09T17:26:16","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T22:26:16","slug":"bates-at-night-students-celebrate-diwali-hindu-festival-of-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2017\/10\/27\/bates-at-night-students-celebrate-diwali-hindu-festival-of-lights\/","title":{"rendered":"Bates at Night: Diwali comes to Bates with dancing, dinner, and sparklers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inside the Muskie Garden around 7 o\u2019clock Monday\u00a0night, one could hear the sounds of crunching leaves and a match taking flame.<\/p>\n

A smell filled the air, but it wasn\u2019t the classic New England autumnal smell of burning leaves \u2014 it was aluminum and magnesium from blazing sparklers.<\/p>\n

The festival night of Diwali, the major Hindu celebration of light, had begun on campus.\u00a0With the official holiday on Oct. 19, when Bates was on break, the Multifaith Chaplaincy presented the Bates Diwali celebration on Monday\u00a0as students returned.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou associate a certain smell that comes from sparklers,\u201d says Prarthana Mocherla \u201921 of Old Tappan, N.J. \u201cIt reminds me of my childhood and my home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBack home, my brothers and sister all fight over who gets to light the first firecracker,\u201d says Meha Jhajharia \u201819 of Kolkata, India.<\/p>\n

About 50 celebrators, mostly students, gathered first at the Benjamin Mays Center for Rangoli chalk decorating and dinner, then walked to the Muskie Garden for sparklers.<\/p>\n\t\n\t

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Armaan Mecca '21 looks toward a sparkler he has lit. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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Sukanya Shukla '20 of Gwalior, India, and Fahim Sakil Khan '20 of Dhaka, Bangladesh, embrace inside the Benjamin Mays Center. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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Verma Muskan \u201921 and Sukanya Shukla \u201920 break out in dance while waiting in line for dinner at the Mays Center. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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Verma Muskan \u201921 dances with other students in the Mays Center after the Diwali dinner. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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Inside the Muskie Garden, Jhansi Kolli \u201921 of Murfreesboro, Tenn.; Armaan Mecca \u201921 of Chennai, India; and Prarthana Mocherla \u201921 of Old Tappan, N.J., light sparklers to celebrate Diwali. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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As with similar faith traditions that celebrate light at the end of the year, Diwali is a happy time, symbolizing the victory of light over darkness and the triumph of things good over bad.<\/p>\n

For Armaan Mecca \u201921 of Chennai, India, Diwali is about \u201ccoming together to have fun, and spending time getting to know people.\u201d<\/p>\n

His first Bates Diwali was \u201cso special because I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d experience something like this outside India.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For first-year Armaan Mecca of Chennai, India, his first Bates Diwali was \u201cso special because I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d experience something like this outside India.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1016,"featured_media":110667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,133,11012],"tags":[11217,1602],"class_list":["post-110661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-creativity","category-student-life","tag-bates-at-night","tag-benjamin-mays-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1016"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110661"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110788,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110661\/revisions\/110788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}