It seems like each year Diwali in Melbourne is bigger and better.
Case in point, Saturday 26th of October, when not one, but three major Melbourne Diwali events lit up the garden state – Celebrate India’s Fed Square Diwali, RACV’s Diwali at Marvel Stadium, and the Premier’s State Diwali reception!
Now I’m a dedicated journalist (especially when that involves eating nice food and collecting freebies) so I couldn’t say no to going to all three of them in one day. Even if that meant a lot of walking and ringing ears.
First up, Celebrate India’s Diwali at 12:00pm – though billed on Federation Square’s website to run from 11am to 10pm, things were pretty sleepy when I arrived, with most stalls still setting up for what was understandably going to become a sizeable day. (Of course, a stall providing free pickles already had a flock.)
With an estimated 15k+ attendees, I didn’t mind missing out on the massive lines but would have loved to have seen some daytime entertainment on the stage. At this point, even the promising sounding ‘interactive Ram Darbar’ was just a placeholder poster of the deities – it seems I beat Lord Ram there too!
Nonetheless, there was plenty of great food from the food trucks lining Birrarung Marr, from Desi Kothi ice creams to Hare Krishna fare, and the mouthwatering smells wafting from them were already generating a buzz from passers-by.
Having attended last year’s event, I was sure this would grow into a teeming spectacle over the course of the day, so at 1pm, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and hopped on the train to Marvel Stadium.
Bumping in an event with over 15k attendees is understandably a time-consuming affair, as even the RACV Melbourne Diwali was still setting up their stage when I arrived at the advertised start time.
At the café tent area, catering chefs were just starting to plate up, each tent providing snack items from various regions of India, from Jhalmuri to Vegetable 65. I opted for some Bread Pakoras and headed to the Business Lounge, where a variety of stalls from jewellery and sweets to Brahma-kumaris were set up – freebies abound, including my coveted first slices of Kaju Katli for the season.
By the time I’d finished in here, the stage was alive with activity, the children’s dance competition underway, with plenty of giveaways for any audience members brave enough to dance on stage. An Indigenous T-Shirt decorating stall proved an engaging culture blending activity for kids, and a roaming mascot for the Container Deposit Scheme was also popular.
By this point, I could feel the Dessert Corner food truck’s Special Falooda calling for me, so I headed back to Federation Square where things had certainly picked up, and various dance troupes had garnered a crowd around the stage. Sadly, I couldn’t stay and watch, as I had to get dressed for my final event of the day, the Premier’s State Diwali Reception!
Held on the second floor of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, the venue provided an expansive view of the Southbank skyline, and numerous decorated backdrops for dignitaries and community leaders to take photos.
The doors opened to an even bigger venue than last year, with the guest list surely surpassing 2000 attendees. I took my seat to enjoy some chaat entrees, and couldn’t resist opening this year’s gift, a box of laddoos…except these weren’t laddoos, these were hyper realistic laddoo shaped candles, and I was so tired I had just taken a bite into some wax.
The Laddoo Fata Morgana seemed to have bamboozled several people, and MC Divya Dhingra was even forced to begin the night with an announcement to prevent any wax or surprise induced hospitalisations.
The night moved swiftly on to the lighting of the ceremonial diya by a string of dignitaries, and then Lakshmi Pooja with very amenable participation from Premier Jacinta Allan, resplendent in a blue and purple Kanjivaram sari.
Premier Allan’s speech was a highlight of the night, proudly declaring ‘every single inch’ of Victoria a multicultural state, and one that ‘belongs to everyone who came to improve their own lives, and in turn improved others’.’ She acknowledged the ‘hate and pain’ of recent world events, praising the community’s volunteers who ‘don’t just keep society strong, but keep it standing’ and likening Diwali’s symbolic triumph of light to ‘fairness trumping prejudice’.
Makarand Bhagwat, Director of the Victorian chapter of The Hindu Council of Australia, began his speech with a Sanskrit Acknowledgement of Country, a thoughtful gesture uniting the oldest continuing culture with the oldest known language, and then appealed to his Goddess Lakshmi in the form of Jacinta Allan to grant funding.
Dance numbers from The Cultural Mosaic, Australian Nepalese Multicultural Centre and Nadanalaya Academy were all exquisitely performed, a lovely display of the diverse subsections of the diaspora who all come together to celebrate Diwali.
The rest of the dishes were then served, the organisers opting for a shared serving rather than individual portions to enhance the communal feeling of Diwali, with the rest of the night free for mingling and more photos; a joyous, stately affair.
As I enjoyed my fourth Kulfi for the day, I reflected on how far the festival of lights had come in Victoria. Growing up without many South Asian folks around us, Diwali for me was a straightforward affair which consisted of mum cooking up a storm for over a week and me taking this food to school to the quizzical looks of my non-brown peers.
In recent years however, the welcome rise of the South Asian diaspora and my job as a journalist for Indian Link has completely upturned this; it makes me so proud and happy to have so much festivity around me, to the point of three major Melbourne Diwali events in one day! I finally felt like I understood the level of enthusiasm and community my parents would have felt celebrating Diwali in India.
According to Mr Bhagwat in his speech, for the first time this year, even Hindus across Victoria’s correctional facilities were enjoying Diwali sweets. With multiple Diwali celebrations possible on one day, who knows, a Diwali public holiday might not be too far away…
