Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Car­ring­ton

Lo­cal ar­ti­sans are putting a mod­ern spin on Di­vali tra­di­tions, us­ing tech­nol­o­gy and cre­ative crafts­man­ship to trans­form or­di­nary ma­te­ri­als in­to in­tri­cate dec­o­ra­tions as de­mand grows for lo­cal­ly pro­duced fes­tive or­na­ments.

From dec­o­ra­tive wall hang­ings and elab­o­rate door pieces to cus­tomised de­signs for homes and of­fices, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s crafts­peo­ple are find­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties to show­case their tal­ents dur­ing the Fes­ti­val of Lights.

Some are turn­ing to com­put­er nu­mer­i­cal con­trol (CNC) routers, us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy to cut and en­grave in­tri­cate pat­terns and de­signs that com­bine tra­di­tion­al Di­vali im­agery with con­tem­po­rary styles.

For Sid­dhi Sankar, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of The Lit­tle Store Lim­it­ed, this grow­ing in­volve­ment of lo­cal ar­ti­sans rep­re­sents an en­cour­ag­ing de­vel­op­ment in a mar­ket where im­port­ed fes­tive dec­o­ra­tions have tra­di­tion­al­ly held a promi­nent place.

“We’ve seen a lot of lo­cal ar­ti­sans re­al­ly hon­ing their craft and hon­ing their skills. What­ev­er ma­chin­ery they al­ready pos­sess,” Sankar said.

“So we have peo­ple who have CNC routers. They would use that to cre­ate Di­vali dé­cor and they come and ap­ply their trade.”

Sankar be­lieves the trend of­fers op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal crafts­men and small man­u­fac­tur­ers to de­vel­op prod­ucts in­spired by Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al tra­di­tions while gen­er­at­ing ad­di­tion­al in­come dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son.

“And that’s some­thing that we re­al­ly, re­al­ly val­ue at The Lit­tle Store. Ar­ti­sanal craft of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

Lo­cal cre­ativ­i­ty takes cen­tre stage

The grow­ing em­pha­sis on lo­cal­ly craft­ed dec­o­ra­tions comes amid what Sankar de­scribes as a no­tice­able change in con­sumer pref­er­ences ahead of Di­vali 2026.

While re­li­gious items, tra­di­tion­al clay deyas and in­gre­di­ents for pu­ja re­main es­sen­tial pur­chas­es, dec­o­ra­tive mer­chan­dise is at­tract­ing con­sid­er­able at­ten­tion.

“It’s dé­cor up­on dé­cor up­on dé­cor,” Sankar de­clared.

“Di­vali dé­cor at The Lit­tle Store is nev­er be­fore seen in all of our years of ex­is­tence.”

She said the in­creas­ing in­ter­est ex­tends be­yond house­hold cel­e­bra­tions, with dec­o­ra­tions al­so be­ing sought for of­fices and school func­tions.

“For your homes, for your of­fice, for your school func­tions, dé­cor has re­al­ly tak­en the spot­light this Di­vali,” she ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Sankar, mod­ern dec­o­ra­tive items now ex­tend to al­most every area of the home, in­clud­ing walls, doors, kitchens and floors.

Faith re­mains at the heart of Di­vali

How­ev­er, she ac­knowl­edged that the re­li­gious tra­di­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with Di­vali re­main cen­tral to the cel­e­bra­tion.

“By pri­or­i­ty, peo­ple come to the pu­ja store for their pu­ja in­gre­di­ents,” she said.

“Di­vali is in­com­plete with­out Lak­sh­mi Pu­ja and then fol­lowed by that, we ob­serve Di­vali by light­ing deyas out and on the roads and in our homes.”

Lak­sh­mi Pu­ja, the wor­ship of God­dess Lak­sh­mi, who is as­so­ci­at­ed with pros­per­i­ty and good for­tune, is an im­por­tant part of the fes­ti­val for many Hin­du fam­i­lies.

The light­ing of deyas sym­bol­is­es the tri­umph of light over dark­ness and good over evil, tra­di­tions that have been pre­served in Trinidad and To­ba­go since the ar­rival of In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers in the 19th cen­tu­ry.

How­ev­er, while the dec­o­ra­tive side of Di­vali is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly elab­o­rate, not every house­hold is em­brac­ing the trend.

Keep­ing cel­e­bra­tions sim­ple

For shop­per Roshan Motie, this year’s prepa­ra­tions are be­ing kept de­lib­er­ate­ly sim­ple.

Motie was search­ing for a new mala, or dec­o­ra­tive gar­land, to adorn the pic­ture of God­dess Lak­sh­mi used dur­ing his fam­i­ly’s an­nu­al prayers.

De­spite the wide se­lec­tion avail­able, he was tak­ing his time to find some­thing suit­able.

“I have seen too much, too much,” he said.

“So, just try­ing to see if I get the, well, not the per­fect one but the right one.”

He ex­plained that pur­chas­ing a new mala is some­thing he does every year, re­gard­less of the scale of the fam­i­ly’s cel­e­bra­tion.

“Just every year I nor­mal­ly get a brand new mala for the Lak­sh­mi Pu­ja pic­ture, what we do our lit­tle prayers on, and I al­ways get it here, some nice ones,” Motie said.

This year, he said, the ob­ser­vance would in­volve on­ly a small fam­i­ly gath­er­ing.

“Well, not much, not in a big way re­al­ly, be­cause there is not much of us, just me and my daugh­ter, and my broth­er, and my two grand­chil­dren, two grand­daugh­ters,” he ex­plained.

“So, noth­ing too elab­o­rate, just a sim­ple lit­tle cel­e­bra­tion. Noth­ing too big this year.”

His ap­proach re­flects the con­tin­u­ing im­por­tance of fam­i­ly cus­toms and re­li­gious ob­ser­vance, even as mod­ern dec­o­ra­tions be­come an in­creas­ing­ly vis­i­ble part of the fes­ti­val.

Build­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties

for lo­cal ar­ti­sans

For Sankar, the changes al­so present an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Trinidad and To­ba­go to de­vel­op a stronger lo­cal craft in­dus­try around cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tions.

She be­lieves ar­ti­sans who al­ready pos­sess spe­cialised equip­ment and tech­ni­cal skills could use their ex­per­tise to cre­ate a wider range of lo­cal­ly in­spired fes­tive prod­ucts.

Rather than re­ly­ing en­tire­ly on im­port­ed de­signs, she hopes the coun­try’s crafts­peo­ple will in­creas­ing­ly con­tribute to the vi­su­al iden­ti­ty of Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions.

“I think I would like to en­cour­age more of the lo­cal ar­ti­sans to get in­to the spir­it of Di­vali,” she said.

“And let us look to Trinidad and To­ba­go to en­hance Di­vali more and more in the up­com­ing years.”

As fam­i­lies pre­pare to il­lu­mi­nate their homes, the con­trast be­tween elab­o­rate mod­ern dec­o­ra­tions and Motie’s sim­ple an­nu­al pur­chase il­lus­trates the chang­ing face of Di­vali.

For lo­cal ar­ti­sans, the fes­ti­val is be­com­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty to turn cre­ativ­i­ty in­to eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. For devo­tees, how­ev­er, the un­der­ly­ing tra­di­tions of prayer, faith and fam­i­ly re­main un­changed.

Whether ex­pressed through an in­tri­cate­ly craft­ed or­na­ment or a sin­gle mala placed around a re­li­gious pic­ture, the Fes­ti­val of Lights con­tin­ues to unite old cus­toms with new ex­pres­sions of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al her­itage.