From the last two years, on the festival on Diwali, I’ve been painting diyas and creating various pieces for puja at home and office. Therefore, to hone that skill this year too, I purchased around 120 handmade diyas from a local potter to paint and then distribute it to people who help my family everyday, like maids who helps to keep our home clean, watchmen who keeps our society safe and helping hands who contributes to keep our society clean.

These people have been through a lot during covid times, risking their lives to earn a livelihood and help us to have some ease during lockdown situation, therefore, to give them even a small moment of happiness and a gift of gratitude for their immense help and support, I distributed painted diyas along with other essentials.

Learning outcomes-

LO-1

As mentioned before, I have been painting diyas for the occasion of Diwali every year. Therefore, I got the idea to distribute it among people who help us daily. In this way, I catered to the creativity as well as the service component on my CAS experience.

LO-2

I usually paint around 60-70 diyas for ritual purposes, however to set a challenge for myself, on top of 70 diyas, I purchased 120 more for distribution purpose. From my previous experiences, I got to know that I used to get really tired painting all the diyas on my own, therefore, to avoid that, I invited one of my friends to help me with the same. This allowed more efficiency and less work on my hands. Over time, I’ll be able to paint large no. of diyas more quickly and with expertise. This made me develop on the existing skill of diya painting and help create smiles on faces of the people important to us.

LO-3

In this process, the planning aspect was quite simple. I had to buy the diyas, select diya designs which were quick and easy to apply, buy necessary acrylic paints and segregate the quantity of diyas to be completed (painted) each day. However, upon initiation, I realized that painting 120 diyas is a huge challenge as we need to first apply the base coat, then the actual color and a touch of gold at the top. The initial plan was to complete 60 diyas each day, however after the completion of 30 diyas we were tired, therefore, it took us 4-5 days to complete the whole process.

LO-5

I am a person with reserved nature and don’t really interact with new people around me, however, I invited my classmate to help me with the process and was able to work efficiently without draining my social energy. This was a great step for me as I don’t often work together with people and sharing my personal space helped me become more comfortable with my friend as well as the situation. Moreover, we both were dedicated throughout, sometimes them more than me, so it was easy to manage the tasks accordingly without feeling tired.

LO-6

This pandemic situation affected everyone in some way or the other. Mental health is one of the ways several people were affected and so were the people who helped us during covid-19 situation. Therefore, to put a smile on their faces, promote good health and well-being and contribute as an individual towards the same, giving away/distribution of painted diyas was one way to make their celebration more festive. From this engagement, I got a lot of smiles and blessings which made me appreciate their help more.

Evidences