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Photograph: Jewella C Miranda
'We spend about Rs 1,000'
NAME: The Ahires, Mumbai

The largest cooking pots of the household have been brought out onto the postage stamp-size veranda that fronts their modest little home, one in a line of 10-20 in a tenement housing in central Mumbai. They are being scrubbed with a small packet of Tide.

Says Chhaya Ahire, "We are doing our Diwali cleaning. We cannot start making sweets till the home is clean." She and her sister-in-law, Rohini, who is over from the northern suburbs, plan to start making Rawa Ladoos, Besan Ladoos, Chakli (made from chick pea flour and rice), Shankar Palli (made by deep-frying squares of white-flour dough and coating them with sugar) over the next day or two. They will make at least a kilogram of each and exchange them with their neighbours all around.

Prathamesh, 10, her son, runs around in front with a troop of friends. His Diwali plans revolve around firecrackers. "Bombs and rockets are my favourites!" He has an elder sister. But she is years older and moved away a long time back and has her own kids. So Prathamesh is virtually an only child in the home.

His father Pradeep is floating about inside their one-room house. He is tuning into snatches of our conversation. Pradeep works as a mukadam (supervisor) at the BMC, the city's municipal corporation. "We spend totally about Rs 1,000 on our Diwalis" This year the Ahires will not be buying new clothes as they usually do because Pradeep's mother died recently and expenses will be less.

How do they accommodate the expenses of Diwali, Dusshera and Ganesh Chaturthi in a space of two months? "We don't celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi. And our main holiday is [B R] Ambedkar's birthday. But we celebrate Diwali for our son." When we peep into the home we realize that place of prominence has been given over to a picture of Buddha super-imposed over a portrait of Dr B R Ambedkar.

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