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00:00Time now for our entre-news segment, and today we're going to learn a little more about the Festival of Lights.
00:04Diwali is celebrated in India and is starting to gain popularity around the world.
00:09And to talk more about this, let's bring in our very own Delano D'Souza.
00:12Delano, let's start at the beginning. What exactly is Diwali?
00:15Hi, Jeannie, good to see you.
00:16Well, Diwali is a festival that celebrates essentially the triumph of good over evil, knowledge over ignorance.
00:22It's a holiday that's popular amongst Hindus over in India, but is celebrated across religious lines.
00:27So Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, everyone celebrates Diwali.
00:32But like everything in India, there is a divide between the North and the South over how it is celebrated or even what it is called.
00:39But what is common in India is you have a lot of these little lights called diyas that are lit and they're pretty much everywhere.
00:45Now, there's also this belief that if you gamble during Diwali, you will be prosperous for the next year.
00:51But I don't know how true this is. I did gamble last year.
00:53Wasn't very prosperous. Maybe that was because I got wiped out.
00:56Now, over the years, there has been this effort to to clean up Diwali, if you will,
01:00and crack down on the lighting of firecrackers, which leads to both air and noise pollution.
01:06So this time around, we had several Indian states who are trying to get ahead of the problem, including Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Tamil Nadu.
01:13And they've taken measures to essentially ban the production, the sale and the use of firecrackers.
01:18But of course, it remains to be seen if those bans are in fact observed and if violators are in fact punished.
01:25Now, Diwali is a public holiday in India, but not just in India.
01:28We have Diwali as a holiday in places like Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, anywhere that there's a large Hindu population.
01:37And are we now seeing this this globalization occurring in other places around the world?
01:41More and more so. In fact, this year we have the public school system in New York that's going to have two days off for Diwali.
01:48This week alone, we had the governor of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania who signed a bill recognizing Diwali as a state holiday.
01:55So it's definitely gaining popularity over in the United States.
01:58Let's not forget the vice president, Kamala Harris.
02:00Her mother was from India and she has celebrated Diwali in the White House.
02:05And maybe that's a tradition. If she does win the presidency, she may continue as president of the United States.
02:11Now, the reason we are seeing Diwali take on this international dimension is simply because of the Indian diaspora being so widespread.
02:19In the United States, for instance, we have heads of Fortune 500 companies who are of Indian origin.
02:26For instance, Alphabet, Microsoft, Adobe.
02:29These are just some companies that have Indian heads.
02:32In the past, Indians would be more personal about how they celebrated their holidays.
02:36But things have started to change in recent years.
02:40We have big celebrations taking place in New York attended by the likes of Padma Lakshmi, Mindy Kaling, well-known Indian-Americans.
02:47This past weekend over in London, in fact, we had Condé Nast Traveler who held its third installment of its Diwali celebrations,
02:56which it co-hosted with French luxury jeweler Cartier.
03:00Now, I reached out to the global editorial director Divya Tani and asked her why a magazine would want to celebrate Diwali.
03:06And she told me when she first arrived in London, she didn't feel that the Diwali celebrations which existed
03:12matched the power and the influence of the Indian community in the UK.
03:16So essentially, she decided to go ahead and start her own.
03:19She contacted Anna Wintour, who told her just run with it.
03:22And she decided to partner with brands which have a long history with India.
03:26So this is why Cartier jumped into the picture.
03:29She told me something interesting. She said that a lot of luxury brands are looking at India in a positive way.
03:34The smart ones recognize the power of the Indian diaspora.
03:38And it's funny that she said that because just a couple of days ago,
03:40we had French shoemaker Christian Louboutin who unveiled a collection called the Diwali Edit.
03:47Now, while this line faced a lot of criticism on social media,
03:51it's just an acknowledgement that global brands need to adapt when targeting the Indian consumer,
03:57whether they are based in India or overseas.
04:00And the toymaker Mattel is even getting in on the action.
04:02That's right. The creator of Barbie unveiled the first Diwali Barbie.
04:06Now, this isn't the first time Mattel has unveiled an Indian type of Barbie.
04:10But in the past, it all has been criticized for things like the skin color, for instance.
04:15This time around, Mattel teamed up with Indian fashion designer Anita Dongre.
04:20The process to create Diwali Barbie lasted about 12 to 18 months.
04:25There was a lot of back and forth over what the Barbie was going to wear, the shoes, the jewelry, etc.
04:32I, in fact, interviewed Anita Dongre for Access Asia this week.
04:36And I asked her about the design process.
04:39And she also told me why she decided not to dress Barbie in a sari. Take a listen.
04:44I wanted to do something contemporary.
04:46I wanted to show to the world that Indian fashion is not just the sari, that it's more than the sari.
04:53And I wanted the design to resonate with young girls all over the world, especially Indians.
05:01It was definitely important for me to make sure that she had the skin tone of the average Indian girl.
05:08And all the feedback that we received from all over the world, such emotional feedback,
05:13saying that finally, like mothers have written to me, sent voice notes to me,
05:16saying that I can finally gift my daughter a doll, a doll that she can relate to,
05:21a doll that looks like her, a doll that has skin color like her.
05:25So that was Anita Dongre speaking to me on Access Asia,
05:28about how she was involved in the process to create Diwali Barbie.
05:33For now, Diwali here in Paris is more amongst the diaspora at home.
05:38It's not really taking on the global dimensions we're seeing in places like London and New York.
05:43But there are members of the community here who want to change that.
05:47In any case, it sounds like a lot of fun. Thank you for telling us all about it.
05:50That's Friends24's Delana D'Souza.