Our roles and responsibilities were very well defined at Diwali. I would be in charge of making Rangoli and my brother and I would put up the lights and decorations. Puja was dad's department and food was mom's. I would intend to wake up early to start off the Rangoli, but it being a holiday, I would always end up oversleeping. Then I would start planning an ambitious, elaborate design, the rough sketch of which would take up half the day. The fun part began after that - painting in the design with bright, thick poster colours. By this time, it would be late afternoon and slight panic would creep in.
In the meantime, we would remember that we should put up the decorations before making the rangoli, not after. But since I wouldn't have really made much progress with my rangoli, the day would be saved and decorations put up. Our favourite ones were those colourful paper-accordians with colours that never seemed to go very well with each other.
By early evening, everyone would pitch in to compete the rangoli, just in time to get ready and start the celebrations. Somehow we managed to repeat the same sequence of events every single year. What fun it was!