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Kaushila Rizal, a grandmother of 17, wore a large smile as she surveyed the scene at Civic Park in Reynoldsburg.
Round her, kids’s colourful kites pierced a radiant blue sky, and hundreds of individuals circulated round an out of doors stage the place youth teams sang deusi-bhailo, or call-and-response carols, within the Nepali language. Males sporting topis — conventional hats with geometric designs — and girls in saris and kurta surwaldresses snacked on South Asian road meals and sweets.
It was Tihar — also called Diwali — which is widely known by Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains from throughout South Asia this week. It holds completely different meanings for various teams throughout South Asia, however a typical theme is the victory of excellent over evil, mild over darkness.
Tihar is a crucial vacation for the Bhutanese Nepali neighborhood in Larger Columbus, who quantity round 30,000, in response to the nonprofit Bhutanese Group of Central Ohio. On Saturday, the Reynoldsburg Metropolis Council and varied Bhutanese-Nepali companies sponsored the town’s first-ever Diwali-Tihar Competition, with varied people dances, meals stalls and youngsters’s actions.
Rizal, 70, mentioned it was the most important Tihar celebration she had seen since leaving Nepal, the place she lived in a refugee camp, 12 years in the past.
“We at all times used to have festivals like this in Nepal and the place I used to be born” in Bhutan, she mentioned.
Bhuwan Pyakurkel, who turned the primary Bhutanese-Nepali-American elected official within the nation when he joined the Reynoldsburg Metropolis Council in 2020, helped set up the pageant. He instructed the Dispatch that the occasion was considered one of his proudest achievements up to now.
“We have been born in Bhutan, and we have been residents there, however regardless of that, we have been persecuted due to our faith, our tradition, our language, and evicted from the nation. As refugees, we struggled to protect our tradition. And right here, on this nation, we’re capable of have a good time our tradition overtly,” he mentioned in Nepali.
In Nepal and Bhutan, Tihar celebrates the victory of the god Ram over the demon-king Ravana, who kidnapped Ram’s spouse Sita and spirited her away to his lair on the island of Lanka.
Along with lighting their houses with lamps — as is completed all through South Asia — Bhutanese Nepalis additionally have a good time Tihar by worshiping crows, canines, and cows. On the occasion on Saturday, a Reynoldsburg police division canine named “Bahadur” was garlanded with marigold flowers, as is conventional.
“In Hinduism, we worship nature,” Shree Narayan Sandilya, the top priest of the Shree Laxmi Narayan Temple in Reynoldsburg, instructed The Dispatch. “We worship canines as a result of they defend us.”
Some non-Hindus additionally have a good time Tihar. Among the many Nepali Bhutanese neighborhood, there are vital minorities of Christians and Buddhists, a few of whom additionally have a good time the pageant.
For a lot of among the many youthful technology of Bhutanese Nepalis in Ohio, Tihar serves as a chance to find out about their very own tradition.
“A variety of our mother and father are working mother and father, and quite a lot of them work at warehouses, they usually don’t have time to sit down down and clarify our faith,” mentioned Arati Chapagai, 21, a senior at Ohio State College. “I’m studying about our tradition and our neighborhood, and my youthful siblings are additionally right here — it’s their first being uncovered to one thing like this.”
Peter Gill covers immigration and new American communities for The Dispatch in partnership with Report for America. You possibly can assist work like his with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America right here:bit.ly/3fNsGaZ.
pgill@dispatch.com
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