The festival of Diwali (festival of
lights in India) just concluded. Associated pyrotechnics have either, with obeisance
to social awareness to reduce pollution or plain boredom, reasonably reduced. I
accept the practicality of it with a tinge of sorrow. Mouthing grandiose earth
saving measures after crossing 30s for most people is convenient having
suddenly found their social conscience heart beating wildly. We have done it
all and now have no qualms about making our children feel guilty about playing
with fireworks for two to three days in a year a tradition which is perhaps
centuries old. The same guilt ridden heart which beats wildly for the earth
seems innocuously silent when it comes to contributing to the same
environmental goal by reducing personalized fuel guzzling travel in fancy cars.
Because it is easy to brainwash the innocent children than to sacrifice travel
in smoke chugging convenience. It is also politically hard work to go behind
vested interests that burn down farmlands or industries that blatantly flout
norms, that are in fact the core reason behind smoke laden cities and not just
children who burn sparkling flowerpots.
But am digressing. The point was
not really to gripe about popular social media viral videos about how one must
not celebrate by using fireworks for Diwali. It saddens one that the younger
generation also lose the plot behind the community and family cohesion that
came about with unified activities preceding the festival.
Diwali the festival of lights also
the celebration of triumph of good over evil. There are multiple stories depending
on the part of the country but they all allude to one singular nonnegotiable fact
that is the victory of the truth and goodness.
The schools usually aligned their
midterm exams well before the midterm holidays to ensure that the tough first
term concluded with a joyous occasion. The festival is also bang in middle of
the many festivities during this period of the year.
The festival entailed hosting a colorful
lantern in the front yard. Lanterns lit by oil lamps had given way to those
powerful ones lit by 100Watt bulbs and also the string of small electric lamps
which lined up the perimeter of the house or the balcony or in some cases our
Hibiscus trees. The first signs of the festivities was the wafting wonderful
aroma of toasted anhydrous dairy fat (ghee) getting ready to host and mingle
happily with refined wheat flour to transform into one of the many sweets that
formed part of the ensemble that had to go into boxes/ steel containers to be
exchanged with those from friends and family.
Mother used to be diligently bent
over the ladle creating with historical expertise sweets that blended with obedience
into shapes and sizes and textures that she wanted. We looked on from a
distance holding our books in one hand peering from the sides of the kitchen
doors waiting for the magic to happen. Slowly the various fat dripping or
powdery or amorphous sweets in various shapes and sizes had taken their dutiful
places in aluminum or steel vaults where they remained untouched till the anointed
day. They would soon be joined by the more savory part of the snacks like fried
chickpea flour fritters / noodles / chaklis and a general assorted savory mixtures.
We looked on longingly hoping that mother would in that rare moment of
relaxation of religious sanctimony offer a few pieces. Her rule book said that
it had to be offered to our beautiful gods on the D day before being partaken.
We looked hard at our gods and secretly prayed surely they would not mind us
dipping into the savories just that bit. Somewhere the prayers would be heard
and mother would with a pretentious strict wave of her hand give us the goodies
and up went the aluminum or steel round vaults locked away for the next few
days.
I think the gods used the festival
to get us humans to clean up our minds and surroundings as one had to clean and
declutter our homes before the festival began. So immediately after the midterm
exams were over we were happily shunted to different parts of the house to hunt
and ferret out hidden dust from corners, throw away articles of futility in use
and generally do a 5S around the home. Great concept actually because besides creating a generally clean atmosphere
it also led to finding many items of value that had been lost and in turn
saving money for a happy dad.
When the washing and cleaning had
been done the next best was to order out the crackers. While we waited for those
fancy temporary tent shops to open and house all those fancy crackers in
exploding colors. The stickers on these crackers packaging usually was the
glossy type one which we kept aside as souvenirs. I found one recently tucked
away in my Wren & Martin for decades. The very bamboo supports coming up on
the open ground set our hearts palpitating in anticipation as it heralded the
incoming favorite festival.
We had two options either to go to
the shops or to order out with the first version of Flipkart and Amazon, temporary
businessmen who went from house to house taking orders for the fireworks to be
delivered on the day of the festival. We
did not savor the idea though we welcomed the person with his fanciful names
for various types of fireworks. But to go with father and siblings to the shop
on an anointed day with a limited budget aroused un-paralled excitement that
mounted as the day progressed. It was a tragedy to not choose from all of the array
of fireworks on the step type structure that the tent held. The shopkeeper
seemed such an important person to us. We wondered if he had a chance to burst
all the unsold crackers at his home. We
usually headed home with a modest selection of spinning wheel / flower pots /
noise electric crackers and the more robust and manly nitrogen bombs as we
called them (sutli bombs) which made the maximum sound
Making the lantern with finely cut
soft bamboo, lining them with translucent and transparent gelatin papers pasted
onto Kraft papers and trying to hold them together with rice starch was a fine
art. It took a whole day to make it look decent. But when the final bulb had
gone in and the rays of light crashed through the colors creating a resplendent
show of rainbow effect on the plants in the garden we looked on in pride
praying the rice starch held on.
The competition always was to see
who got up the earliest on day one and burst the first cracker and whose house
had the maximum color paper litter in front of the house by 6 am as the
sunshine broke through the minor smog. Even in those days sensitive children
had to tie handkerchiefs around their noses to prevent asthmatic attacks. But
the smell of the fireworks was magical. We could identify which cracker had
gone off from the differentiated smells floating around competing with those of
the neighbors. Dangerous practices of keeping flying rockets in glass bottles
held at the best by soil, holding the electric tiny crackers in the hand and
lighting them with the incense stick was frowned up. Being the safe person, I
always landed up timing the louder fireworks using a newspaper string attached
to the fuse to delay the explosion while walking back in styles reminiscent of
the heroes doing the same on the silver screen
Consumption of large scale sweets
and savories created memories main pleasant and some leading back to the doctor
for stomach ailments due to over consumption.
Today in a world with glossy
packaged sweets sold in shiny malls prepared industrially where children don’t peek
at their mothers cooking in anticipation has deprived the festival a lot of its
magic. We must try not to rob the children of the festival aura with the
traditions that precede or succeed the event be it Christmas Diwali or Idd or
any of the wonderful celebration milestones that human beings have in their
wonderful journey of life.
My mother was happy that we had
kept the tradition alive and prepared the savories and sweets at home. She
always believed it to be safe and important as it is part of the journey of
wonderful mood that we must luxuriate in and make sure our children do too.
