Ah, Diwali. Festival of lights. A celebration of good triumphing over evil. A time to bemuse your boss and win free dessert from your local Indian buffet. …right?

As I’ve mentioned previously, I happen to work in a very diverse office – and with a recent switch in teams, I now report to a South Indian manager. He’s a great boss, but, occasionally, well, I can’t help myself – I’ll mention a Hindu tradition or a Bollywood film just to see his reaction. You see, despite the fact that he knows I’m married to an Indian, he’s always so surprised when I show any knowledge of Indian culture. Shocked, almost.

So, of course, to celebrate Diwali this year I decided to wear a sari to work.

To be more specific, a female Indian coworker and I  coerced convinced the junior staff on our team to wear Indian dress to the office on Friday. My coworker had one sari from a family wedding to wear, and I loaned out saris and kurtas to everyone else. Between the two of us, we were able to get everyone wrapped up, pinned up, and decked out in bangles before our boss arrived. The look on his face was, let us say, well worth the trouble.

I'm on the right

Everyone looked pretty great in their saris, no?

For lunch, the group went out to the closest Indian buffet, Jaipur, where we snapped the photograph above. The staff there was also quite surprised seeing their regular customers arrive in saris and kurtas – surprised & appreciative.  Despite the fact that it was a buffet lunch, they brought out a surprise dish of Indian desserts just for our group at the end of our meal:

It was clear that the kitchen had taken some time to create the dish, which featured Gajar Ka Halwa, Ras Gulla, and Gulab Jamun with a garnish of shredded coconut and cherries. Like every other Indian dessert I have had, it was delicious, if extraordinarily sweet. After lunch we all shuffled back to the office before falling into the typical post-Jaipur sugar coma.

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For anyone wondering, on Diwali proper (i.e. Saturday), Aditya, myself, and the Indian coworker pictured above woke up crazy early to get to a local Hindu temple in time for the morning aarti. It was very quiet there – I think the rain and near-freezing temperatures kept everyone else away. Afterwards we retreated from the cold to Starbucks for breakfast, and then, in the spirit of combining American holiday consumerism with a Diwali custom, we went shopping for some new clothes. And that was how the Gori Girl household celebrated Diwali this year.

(Sunday we returned to my roots, and celebrated an American football Sunday with Vietnamese seafood hotpot and German boardgames at a friend’s house. All in all, a pretty awesome weekend.)