I think I’ve always disliked the holidays. I’ve shed them before I had the chance to wear them. 

The first Diwali I remember celebrating was in 2013. I was 6, in pyjamas, watching my mother prepare the tray for the pooja (prayer ritual) ceremony. My father was absorbed in the latest cricket match on TV while my older sister stood dressed in the latest ethnic outfit my mother had bought her. We didn’t have the dog then, so we were saved from the carnage and destruction of the flower petals and of the precious rangoli (decorative floor art), which was displayed out on the steps of the staircase. I remember fragments of the occasion—not much, but one thought that went through my mind (mind you, it was the middle childhood phase at this moment) was that I hated how they went.                                          

For me, the holidays were not always associated with parties or familial connections with long-distance cousins and relatives. While that was a much larger part of it, it was often accompanied by constant yelling and shouting within my home's confines just an hour before the celebrations. On every occasion where we celebrated grandly and socially, we would have arguments before about what to wear, what to serve, and most importantly, what the people coming think of us—our picture-perfect family. And the one wish I made every time, sitting in the four walls of my mother's and mine’s shared bedroom, was simple—let this pass. Let the holiday pass on, let it flow like a gust of wind that comes annually, and let the air remain the same, just without the speed of this particular gust.

Time and holidays have always moved proportionately in my life. The holidays are for wearing the skin of all your past selves, hoping they do not consume you whole, hoping that they are somewhat proud, and hoping that a minuscule amount of joy lights up in their hearts when they see you. 

But I am no longer six, and neither is my home the same. It is not the same people or the same feelings. The middle childhood phase has long passed, and as I progress into my last year of being free from the shackles of adulthood, I realise that time has passed in a way I do not comprehend. What I wished for all those years ago, sitting in the Diwali pooja (prayer ritual) at the temple, has indeed come true. I am no longer six; I am seventeen. Saying that out loud is scary; it is exhilarating; it is terrifying; it is absolutely everything and nothing to me at the same time. 

Time. It is a word we use endlessly, across contexts and circumstances, yet we rarely understand it until it has already moved beyond us. No one is telling you to climb Mount Everest because you don’t have time. But that one person you really like and can’t get out of your head? Text them. The inexplicable urge to dye your hair? Dye it. Do whatever feels right, be with people who allow you to feel good and feel right, experience both good and bad, and you will come to the realisation that time is going exactly as you wish it was. 

No longer are you wishing at the steps of the temple for the gust to pass. Instead, you begin to embrace the moments as they come, each holiday becoming an opportunity to redefine what celebration means to you. The essence of these occasions shifts from obligation to choice, from enduring the chaos and arguments to actively participating in the joy—to starting to ask the creator you believe in for happiness and connection and not the newest edition of the Barbie Dreamhouse. 

The holidays shed one after another—Diwali, Halloween, Hanukkah, Christmas, and finally, the New Year. As you sit at the dining table and reflect upon each memory, you understand. Left in the throes of adulthood to fend for specs of joy alone, one yearns for what it must have felt like for a young child to be surrounded by it entirely. From begging my mother to stay just five more minutes at the Diwali party to complaining that I had no clothes to wear for it just hours before, I remember, but most importantly, I yearn. For if even one moment had brought happiness, it was more than enough. 

The smell of festive sweets, the glow of candles or diyas, the sound of fireworks, and the chatter of relatives—all these things that once seemed suffocating are now like faded snapshots, reminding you of the past but no longer controlling your present. Sitting here at seventeen, I now understand that those moments, messy and minutely bitter as they were, shaped me in ways six-year-old or thirteen-year-old me might not have seen back then. 

The things I once resented—my family’s obsession with appearances, the pressure to fit into one of the ethnic dresses, the relentless desire to seem that our familial unit had not a shred of conflict in it—are threads in a tapestry that tell the story of who I was, who I am, and who I am becoming.

When I celebrated Diwali this year, I was greeted with a sense of contentment I had not expected. Content, in the way of sitting and praying to my creator for the things I desire, in the way of sharing the prasad (offerings at the pooja) with my family members (yes, even the dog), and lastly, content in the realisation that this may be my last Diwali celebration for a long time before I go off to college. 

The girl in me who once wished time would hurry up and pass finds herself spending just a bit too long staring at herself in the ethnic dress in the mirror. Once again, I yearn for moments that were earlier endured instead of lived. 

And as I click the exit button on this document tab, I permit myself to exist for the coming holidays. The turning of the year may or may not change me, but it will most certainly change the world around me. And that is one challenge I look forward to, similar to the gusts of wind that challenge the monotone zephyr of everyday life. 

The holidays are no longer gusts of wind that you wish would pass; they are breezes that you walk through, breathe in, and ultimately, make your own.