RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Strong sales of deyas and roti added to the Di­vali buzz in Debe, where flags lined Welling­ton Road and bam­boo struc­tures adorned with flam­beaux were be­ing pre­pared for yes­ter­day’s cel­e­bra­tions.

Out­side Lily’s Paratha Shop on Welling­ton Road, cars lined the road as res­i­dents col­lect­ed roti to ac­com­pa­ny tra­di­tion­al meals of pump­kin, cur­ried man­go, sa­heena, talka­ri, chan­na and aloo, chataigne and oth­er del­i­ca­cies.

Lily Sama­roo said cus­tomers be­gan ar­riv­ing as ear­ly as 6 am, with more than 700 vis­it­ing by mid-morn­ing.

Prepa­ra­tions had start­ed days ear­li­er, she said, and she had worked through the night to meet de­mand. She be­gan prepar­ing or­ders at 2 am the pre­vi­ous day and used about 6,500 pounds of flour to ful­fil or­ders on Di­vali morn­ing.

De­spite the de­mand­ing sched­ule, Sama­roo said she was pleased with the busi­ness’s con­tin­ued growth, which she at­trib­uted to the qual­i­ty of her prod­ucts and the re­la­tion­ships she had built with cus­tomers.

“When they buy one time, they will say they love the qual­i­ty, so they come back an­oth­er time,” she said.

Narace Bachan, who col­lect­ed his roti, said Di­vali was a time to pre­pare food and en­joy the com­pa­ny of fam­i­ly. His mes­sage to the coun­try was to “spread love and joy to the en­tire coun­try and do the best you can do”.

Levi Gon­za­les al­so shared a mes­sage of good­will, wish­ing every­one “health, light and pros­per­i­ty”.

He said Di­vali fes­tiv­i­ties were abun­dant in his com­mu­ni­ty of Di­a­mond Vil­lage.

De­spite re­stric­tions on fire­works, en­thu­si­asts turned out to buy their usu­al sup­plies, with re­tail­ers re­port­ing steady sales ahead of the cel­e­bra­tions.

At Daryl’s Fire­works De­pot at Debe Junc­tion, pro­pri­etor Daryl Sumair said sales had been en­cour­ag­ing, al­though the busi­ness had faced some chal­lenges com­pared with pre­vi­ous years.

Sumair said the re­stric­tions pro­vid­ed a frame­work for re­tail­ers and cus­tomers, and he hoped peo­ple would ob­serve the stip­u­lat­ed hours.

He said fire­works had be­come part of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Di­vali cul­ture, along­side tra­di­tion­al bam­boo dis­plays and oth­er fes­tiv­i­ties.

“We do un­der­stand and we sym­pa­thise with an­i­mal ac­tivists,” Sumair said, re­fer­ring to an­i­mal wel­fare ad­vo­cates who have raised con­cerns about fire­works.

He said he hoped re­tail­ers, cus­tomers and an­i­mal wel­fare ad­vo­cates could work to­geth­er to en­sure peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed re­spon­si­bly and lived in har­mo­ny.

Sumair said some items had be­come more ex­pen­sive be­cause of im­port costs. Fun snaps and starlights, which pre­vi­ous­ly sold for $1, now cost $2.

Deya re­tail­er Chanie Boodram said she had been cau­tious with her pur­chas­es this year be­cause of the eco­nom­ic cli­mate and dis­ap­point­ing sales the pre­vi­ous year.

Boodram, whose fam­i­ly has op­er­at­ed the busi­ness for more than 30 years, said she had fo­cused on sup­ply­ing reg­u­lar cus­tomers rather than buy­ing large quan­ti­ties of stock.

“Based on the econ­o­my for the past two years, we have to go with less goods,” she said, adding that she was grate­ful most of her stock had sold.

Al­though the econ­o­my was dif­fi­cult, Boodram said she was hap­py peo­ple con­tin­ued to spread the love and light of the Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions.