Even though Seema Singh’s home in Richmond Hill, Queens, will be filled with sweet treats this Halloween night, the offerings will be a far cry from miniature candy bars and packs of gum handed out to little ones in costumes.
This year, Oct. 31 also falls on the third and most important night of Diwali, the five-day Hindu festival of lights, and Ms. Singh, who is Guyanese of East Indian descent, will be serving family and friends a variety of Indo-Caribbean desserts, including goja, a fried coconut tart unique to Guyana, along with peera, a version of an Indian dessert called peda, similar to a milk-based fudge.
Recipe: Prasad
An autumn celebration whose date changes from year to year, Diwali is one of the most significant holidays in the Hindu calendar and honors the concept of goodness or light winning over evil or darkness. It is also observed in Sikh, Jain and some Buddhist communities, often with vegetarian feasting and displays of small oil lamps called diyas.
M.R. Ravi Vaidyanaat Šivãchãriar, the director of religious affairs at the Hindu Temple Society of North America in Jackson Heights, said while adherents universally understand the holiday’s Hindu religious principles, there are regional differences in practice.
In Indo-Caribbean homes like Ms. Singh’s and those of her Trinidadian and Surinamese neighbors, the dishes of Diwali are interpretations of traditional Indian foods, unique to descendants of indentured laborers who, in some cases, arrived on the islands as far back as 180 years ago.
And while many Indo-Caribbean Diwali practices haven’t changed much since that time, sweets, collectively called mithai, are central to Indian Diwali celebrations, evolving since then, said Lomarsh Roopnarine, a professor of Indo-Caribbean studies at Jackson State University in Mississippi.
Ms. Singh said the most important desserts in Indo-Caribbean celebrations, she noted, were sweet rice, or rice pudding, sometimes made with coconut milk, and prasad, or farina, cooked in ghee with dried fruits, coconut and nuts, depending on preference, and served in brown paper bags.
Like Ms. Singh, Nanda Latchman, a nurse from Ozone Park, prepares Guyanese sweets, including some that stayed close to their Indian origins, like gulgulla, a banana fritter, and jalebi, a lacy, orange-hued fried dough soaked in sugar syrup, bringing baskets of them — and prasad — to neighbors, regardless of their faith.
When Ms. Latchman lived in East New York, “there was not a community celebration,” she said. “We still did it, but we didn’t have the courage to bring it out of the apartment,” adding, “Some people thought we were celebrating Halloween before Halloween.” Now, she said, she feels grateful to live in a community where her cultural practices are well understood.
Kapadia Lallman of Richmond Hill, also distributes free food to visitors. While her catering company, KP Kitchen, sells Guyanese sweets as well as traditional Indian golab jamun (fried milk curds dipped in syrup), she gives away seven vegetarian curries, another Indo-Caribbean Diwali tradition.
Colette Cyrus-Burnett, an Afro-Caribbean chef and food security strategist who lives in Brooklyn and was raised in a largely East Indian community in Trinidad, recalls Diwali in Richmond Hill, where she once worked, as the best time of year.
In Guyana as in Trinidad, Diwali light festivals have evolved into huge motorcades of light-festooned vehicles, during the third night of the five-day festival. In Richmond Hill, the motorcade tradition continues, as it has for the past 25 years, though it is held a little later, on Nov. 2, this year.
“The businesses on Liberty Avenue would be decorated,” she said, “and sweets would flow like water.”
For example, while many Hindus stay home during the holiday, businesses like Shivram’s Bakery on Liberty Avenue, remain open to serve the Indo-Caribbean workers who live in rented rooms and have no way of preparing food during Diwali. Shivram’s sells seven curries in takeaway containers and vazmacelli cake, a Guyanese version of Indian kheer, or vermicelli pudding.
On the day of the motorcade, the bakery sets up a tent outside, giving away prasad, mithai and other sweets to hundreds of attendees.
“We don’t ask for anything other than for people to show up,” said Tara Shivram, who owns Shivram’s with her husband, Kris, adding, “We believe in giving back.”
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