“How come if it’s all about lights, that’s it so noisy?” Good question, wise niece, but it’s not just noisy it is NOISY all in uppercase and it is nosily noisy because the noise noses into our sleep which is already not all that noiseless what with the hundred and one noisy thoughts that are knocking and bursting around in our heads. But it’s just once a year and everyone decides to go about celebrating Diwali their own way. With rangolis, with diyas, with biryani, with sparklers, and firecrakers that end with a boom or without a whimper.
Gone are the days when you went with one uncle to shop for crackers, hide the loot and then beg another uncle to buy you more. The more the uncles and aunts, the merrier because we in India still had one set of parents…not yet graduated into the step and the half of parenthood. However, you had two sets of grandparents, so you tapped one set and then the other. Then your parents were duty bound to buy you firecrackers as well and boy were you going to hang around them to remind them of their duties. So at the end of all the procurement exercises, you had a satisfying heist and you began sunning it daily with concentrated responsibility that your parents wished you showed when you studied Math.
And then came Diwali…oh the much awaited day when you began with seven diyas near the tulsi and went on to light up the entire house with diyas and candles. You had all the conniving cousins over with their collection, which was probably the result of a heist conducted in a similar manner as your own. Those were the days…of the endless sparklers, earthen flowerpots as well as the conical paper ones, the Chinese crackers, the gory black snake tablets that oozed out black ash that crumbled with a prod, the chakris that spun on the floor as you danced dodging the sparks. For the more adventurous among us, it was the tal-patra patakas made from the palmyra trees while the less brave were content lighting the colored matchsticks and the plain phuljharis. Everything was a matter of togetherness from the clothes to the dinners and we thought of nothing about taxing our mothers and aunts who ended up doing all the work and were tired at the end of it all.
That was then. Now Diwali is a whirl of statements. A statement on one’s wealth—the earth shaking 1000 laddi, the 3000 rupees each firework that creates patterns in the sky and the Diwali parties to die for. A statement against child labour—a day of thought for the underage workers in the firework industry…you don’t burst any crackers today because you want to spare them a thought that will be gone tomorrow. A statement against pollution—you settle for the quiet among the crackers for yourself and listen to the entire neighborhood’s frenzy of explosions. In this world of statements, we forget to really savour the moment of fun, or understand the symbolism of the lights, make it meaningful by splashing in the togetherness, and miss the chance to have another memorable Diwali. It just came and it went, like any other festival does.
Then there are those light up the neighbour’s coconut tree. “It was a genuine accident—the rocket swerved from its orbit and made a bonfire of the coconut tree. We did in no way want to make an issue of it, after all it could have been planted by a great grandfather or his ancestors, so we just sauntered inside innocently and rushed out again to alert them to call for a fire engine”, said the inadvertent arsonist. “It was a terribly damp Diwali for them considering that their bedrooms were flooded”, she continued, “But our children were delighted to see the fire engine and all the firemen at work. So there was some learning in it after all”.
Hope you all had a memorably happy and safe Diwali?
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