[But for those who attend the Dallas mela, Nov. 4 may as well be the official holiday. What brings them here is the sheer scope and Technicolor splash of the spectacle: Bollywood singers are flown in from India. A cast of 150 volunteers stages a production of the Ramlila (a re-enactment of the Ramayana, the Hindu epic). Three giant burning effigies of the 10-headed Hindu villain Ravana and his family crackle into the night, and hundreds of cooks fry up syrupy, spice-laced Indian sweets.]
By
Priya Krishna
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A pack of Bengali mithai,
milk- and nut-based sweets, from Bombay Sweets &
Snacks in Irving, Tex.
Credit Allison V. Smith for The New York Times
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Like the state fair, the annual event — known
officially as the DFW Diwali Mela (for Dallas-Fort Worth) — is built around
food and mounted on a scale worthy of Texas. Held in and around the Cotton
Bowl, it is among the largest and grandest Diwali celebrations in the United
States.
Dallas is not the most obvious setting.
Though the city and its surrounding area have one of the nation’s largest
Indian populations (108,000 in the 2010 census), the Chicago region’s is nearly
twice that size, and the New York-New Jersey area’s is more than five times as
large. The Dallas festival doesn’t even take place on Diwali (Oct. 19 this
year) because the state fair is using the fairgrounds then.
But for those who attend the Dallas mela,
Nov. 4 may as well be the official holiday. What brings them here is the sheer
scope and Technicolor splash of the spectacle: Bollywood singers are flown in
from India. A cast of 150 volunteers stages a production of the Ramlila (a
re-enactment of the Ramayana, the Hindu epic). Three giant burning effigies of
the 10-headed Hindu villain Ravana and his family crackle into the night, and
hundreds of cooks fry up syrupy, spice-laced Indian sweets.
This year’s festival will have a slightly
different tone than in years past, coming so soon after Hurricane Harvey, which
devastated much of Houston and other parts of southeastern Texas. Organizers
are expecting a sizable contingent from Houston’s large Indian community to travel
more than 200 miles to Dallas, in part because Houston’s Diwali celebration on
Oct. 7 was smaller this year in the wake of the floods.
“We have so many friends there,” said Satish
Gupta, who founded the Dallas mela. (Its supporting organization, the DFW
Indian Cultural Society, is aiding hurricane relief efforts.) “It’s not even a
question. Whatever help we can provide.”
This means, too, that the coming event could
be the largest in the history of the city’s festival.
One of its central components — and the
backdrop to every other activity at the mela — is the dizzying array of foods,
with special care taken to make sure that every region’s Diwali-specific treats
are represented. This multicultural spirit is what sets the Dallas mela apart
from those in other cities.
Raja Alagarsamy, a chef at Saravanaa Bhavan
in Plano, Tex., makes payasam, a saffron-stained milk pudding. Credit Allison
V. Smith for The New York Times
“In a single festival, you can eat Gujarati
snacks while listening to performances in Tamil, and watching South Indian
dance,” said Kalpana Fruitwala, an organizer.
For the event, Subash Chander, the owner of
the popular Bombay Sweets & Snacks in suburban Irving, creates a pack of
Bengali mithai, milk- and nut-based sweets. It includes neon-pink chum chum
(coconut-coated milk solids), and gulab jamun (syrup-soaked balls of deep-fried
batter) filled with a silky mixture of cream and ground almonds.
On a recent afternoon, Mr. Chander was deeply
concentrating on an enormous mixing bowl heated to exactly 450 degrees, making
sure the milk and shredded coconut for the chum chum were being churned to the
ideal softness. If the temperature rises even a few degrees, or the mixture is
stirred for too long, he said, the treat loses its luxurious, slightly bouncy
texture.
“You have to be very patient,” Mr. Chander
said. “Only after 18 years have I figured out the secret to making chum chum
this soft.”
The response at the festival makes all the
care worthwhile. “All night, we have this big line that wraps around many
times,” he said. “It got so long that the organizers had to install stands for
people to wait.”
Lalith Thota, who is busy preparing to open
the restaurant India 101, also in Irving, will make jangiri, a thick, patterned
fritter soaked in sugar syrup (with a shape not unlike that State Fair of Texas
staple, funnel cake) that is eaten widely in Andhra Pradesh.
Nearby, at the restaurant Bawarchi Biryanis,
Anil Sukkagopal said his Diwali booth will serve Mysore pak, a rich, crumbly
pastry made of ghee and chickpea flour that has its origins in Karnataka.
“We want to create an environment like the
street markets in Bombay,” Mr. Sukkagopal said. “We’ll be yelling and shouting
about our food. People will be crowding around. It’s a sensory experience.”
At his booth, Naga Kolli, the owner of the
South Indian restaurant Saravanaa Bhavan, in nearby Plano, will supplement a
menu of dosas and idlis with payasam, a comforting, saffron-stained milk
pudding popular in Tamil Nadu, where the dish is often consumed first thing in
the morning on Diwali, right after prayers.
Testing the recipe in the restaurant’s
kitchen, a cook tossed in just-fried cashews and raisins into a bubbling
stainless steel vat filled with milk and vermicelli noodles, to add richness
and crunch.
“We make it because it is made especially for
Diwali in certain places,” Mr. Naga said, adding with a laugh, “The only
disadvantage of payasam is that because it’s more of a liquid, people have a
hard time walking around the festival with it.”
The Dallas celebration has come a long way
since 1994, when it began as a house party with about 50 guests, bootleg
fireworks and catered food at Mr. Gupta’s home in North Dallas.
When the party started to outgrow his
backyard, Mr. Gupta came up with the idea to turn it into a public,
community-run mela, a type of traditional festival with food and music that
occurs in every village throughout India during Diwali. “We wanted to bring
that flavor of home to Dallas, to give our children a closer connection to
Indian culture,” he said.
For the inaugural mela in 2006, Mr. Gupta
ambitiously decided to book Texas Stadium in Irving. “Everyone was making fun
of us,” said R.K. Panditi, a festival organizer who oversees the food vendors.
“We knew we wouldn’t fill it, but I thought maybe we’ll get 15,000.”
More than 38,000 people showed up, creating a
major traffic jam on the freeway, and an hourlong wait just to enter the
stadium. The food ran out within the first hour, so Mr. Panditi had to ask two
nearby Indian restaurants to stay open until 4 a.m. to feed the crowds.
Since 2011, the festival has taken place in
the Cotton Bowl, which has a capacity of nearly 100,000, and the added allure
of being a citywide landmark and the site of the state fair.
The festival has played an enormous role in
expanding the impact of the Indian community, whose population in the Dallas
area alone more than doubled between 2000 and 2010. There is now a petition
going around the Coppell Independent School District to make Diwali an official
school holiday, and last year a seasonal Diwali postage stamp had its Texas
debut at the mela here.
On Saturday, vendors will arrive at the
Cotton Bowl at 10 a.m. and not leave until well after midnight, when stalls
once loaded with chum chum and biryani have been completely emptied of their
goods.
Staying until the very end is well worth it,
though, as the closing event of the mela is an impressive display of fireworks
shaped like diyas (lamps, a symbol of Diwali), synchronized to a colorful laser
show and Bollywood music — a favorite tradition of Mr. Gupta’s ever since that
first house party.
“Without the fireworks,” he said, a sparkle
in his eye, “there is no Diwali.”
