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PLAINS TOWNSHIP — As the grown-ups made their way past an array of appetizers, choosing battered vegetables and triangular pastries stuffed with spicy filling, preschooler Aria Choudhry swished the skirt of her bright pink anarkali and played peek-a-boo with her bright pink scarf.
“She’s 2, so she just likes the lights and colors and clothes,” her mother, Ambreen Choudhry, of Mountain Top said, explaining her little girl’s reaction to this weekend’s Diwali celebration at Mohegan Sun Pocono. “For the bigger girls, they know it’s the new year.”
The Hindu new year, based on a lunar calendar, is a celebration of good over evil, said Mona Pande, of Shavertown, who is president of the Indian American Association of Northeastern Pennsylvania, which organized the get-together with music, dancing, food and plenty of lights. The celebration lasts for five days.
“The name Diwali means ‘a row of lights,’ ” speaker Prasanna Rao, of Waverly, told the crowd, adding that it wasn’t lamplight or candlelight they celebrated but “the light of divine consciousness.”
“The mind sees differences … that a person is Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Jewish or Sikh or Buddhist,” Rao added, “but the heart sees beyond differences.”
“Let us pray, for just a moment, that we may be touched by grace,” she said before sharing a Hindu prayer. “Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from untruth to truth. Lead me from mortality to immortality.”
After Rao addressed the crowd Sophia Salingaros, a student from Columbia University, performed two sharply precise, classical Indian dances, one that honored Lord Shiva, the creator and destroyer, and one that honored Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles.
Next came a group of about a dozen dancers who acted out a Punjabi folk song that depicted a lively and humorous conflict between two women in a family.
Some of the words translate to “my mother-in-law won’t let me wear fancy shoes but I’m wearing them anyway,” one of the performers explained.
