Deepavali in Darwin

So we have just celebrated our first Deepavali away from Singapore. Let me briefly describe how it went.

We got into Deepavali mood when Sang made Deepavali cards to send out to our families. We then spent a few days cleaning up our apartment. It was not nearly as thorough as when we were living in Punggol. On the eve of Deepavali, Sang did a Kolam on our balcony table. This was to prevent Mischief (foster cat) from running over and ruining it. Apart from that, we put up some décor in addition to the fairy lights that Sang had put up a week ago.

On the morning of Deepavali, we rose early, had a contradicting Western breakfast, did simple prayers and then begun our grocery shopping in preparation for the dinner that we were hosting that night.

After getting our supplies, we got back by noon and begun preparing for dinner. The entire cooking process took us about 5-6 hours. Sang and I tag teamed to cook chicken, lamb, prawn, briyani and brinjal in addition to frying some fritters.

Thankfully, all the dishes came out well and in time for our guests arrival. We had Linda, Sid, Pearl, Richard and Jules over and we had a fantastic and fulfilling experience in hosting them.

At about 10.30, our guests took their leave and we slumped into bed exhausted from the day’s proceedings. It was definitely fulfilling and Sang and I gained more valuable cooking minutes under our relatively green belts.