Everyone in India generally take part don't they regardless of beliefs
Nah, there are regional variations as in everything. AFAIK, the north and South Indians celebrate diwali for separate mythological reasons, and in south we call it "
DEEPAVALI" which literally means
"ARRAY of LIGHTS" , which is what the festival is about .
My state for some reason doesn't celebrate it much, apart from visiting temples . We have our own cracker bursting festival "
VISHU" which arrives in April, and our "festival of Lights" is
"Thrikkarthika" / "Karthikai Deepam" (in tamil) , that we celebrate somewhere in Nov/Dec .
It's an auspicious day for hindus in kerala too but they use technicalities for not spending too much money, even poor people of other states celebrate Diwali much better than us.
How can you blame it on being stingy ? We spend the same kind of money that most hindus spend on Diwali on two of our festivals - O
nam and Vishu . Why should we be apologetic for not celebrating a festival which culturally we didn't celebrate much in the past ?
I don't see any problem in participating in Deepavali celebrations in Bangalore or Chennai, but we don't need to feel sorry for ourselves IMO.
Form what I've seen over the years, Deepavali in Kerala is mostly limited to the TamBrams and Nampoothiri (Brahmin) castes, most other communities don't celebrate it the was they do it up North or in the other southern states. As always Palakkad and tamil influenced areas of Trivandrum are different .
Don't they just go to temple and pray during diwali? Malayali hindus celebrate Vishu with much more zeal and love by spending enough or more money on crackers. Only exceptions are a few places in Trivandrum and Palakkad.
Those 2 districts have the strongest Tamil cultural influence in kerala, hence the tendency to celebrate tamil festivals according to their local calendar. You will also find Pongal celebrated in those areas too (Called PONGALA here) .
My friends especially girls go to temple on this day. But Vishu celebrations in North kerala starts from the night before vishukani. Full crackers, gundu, poothiri, chakram etc like Diwali mode. It's during thrikkarthika (or something like that) they decorate temples with diya. And come on,
during religious festivals malabar hindus eat vegetarian food mostly. Dinner might be chicken biriyani.
You are soo wrong about that . Non veg is must on Vishu for malabaris. Even onam is celebrated with chicken on the side. (
lived in Kannur for a few years ) .
hope you have a good time with your family's @ the Indian posters
and our neighbors in SL 
