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Festivals
For two days nobody in the house reads anything. That is not a pause before the festival. That is the festival.
Everywhere else the tenth day ends something. In Kerala it starts something, and it does it very quietly.
On the evening of Ashtami every book in the house is carried out and laid in front of the Goddess. Schoolbooks, account books, the instrument a musician plays, the tools a carpenter uses. Then the house stops. For two days nobody reads and nobody works at what they know how to do.
People assume this is the waiting part. It is not. The stopping is the rite. You cannot be given something you already have in your hands. So for two days learning is put down. On the third morning it can be received, rather than just carried on.
On Vijayadashami morning a child of about three is bathed and brought in before breakfast, and sat in front of a wide tray of raw rice.
An elder takes a gold ring, dips it in honey, and writes the first letters on the child's tongue. Only then does the same hand take the child's finger and draw the same letters in the rice: Hari Sri Ganapataye Namah. Not the child's name. Not the alphabet in order.
The honey is not there to make a three-year-old sit still. The first taste of learning is meant to be sweet. The tradition says so with something the child can actually taste, rather than with a sentence the child could not follow.
Then the books come back up from the Goddess and are returned to the house, and reading starts again the same day.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.