Happy Diwali?

The glass windows,

Quaked in terror.

And the curtains,

Curled up in fear.

The decibels outside,

Ruptured my ear.

A noisy, smoky Diwali,

Repeats this year.

I sat in my patio-like balcony looking outside the glass windows. I had made sure that I had latched them airtight. Yet, they shuddered once in a while. A little time later, the same balcony from where I had enjoyed the golden-orange skies during the sunset, appeared to me like a warfront, an Indo-Pak border where constant firing continued from either side. However, I eventually composed myself to the fact that it is Diwali time, and what I thought of as bullets, bombs, and hand grenades were actually just crackers.

I am amused how people enjoy Diwali in such destructive manner – personal, financial, environmental, and social as well. Ahh! Let me confess though, that I too had burst some crackers in my childhood, but soon sanity had blessed me and my father’s wallet. I had given up the act of bursting crackers long back (in my 8th standard), and I don’t enjoy looking at people who do so – I just pity their lunacy.

“Deep”awali, if that is the correct term, means a festival of lights, and though we see many homes and streets lit up, the festival has reduced to an insignificant stature of polluting and dirtying the surroundings. I still love the colourful flower pots, sparklers, chakris, but I could hardly locate anyone using it. Everyone took pride in telling each other, “my bomb there, did it rupture your ear enough, come on show me your level”, kind of. What was more irritating was that I could hear the “bombings” even after 10pm, some at 12.30 night, 3.00 early morning.

Having nothing to do, I couldn’t watch TV for no amount of volume could have made it audible, neither could I concentrate on my reading, I gulped down my peg of scotch like a shooter (better than trying bomber outside), had my food and went to sleep. It was 11.00pm.

Next morning I got up fresh and as usual went to the balcony for some stretching exercise. I could see the mess on the roads, both sides lined with cartilage like remains of previous day’s cracker bursting. There was no blood but oil stamps at various spots.

My door bell rang. It was the jhaadoowali bai to pick up the kachra. My neighbour immediately slammed the door when she asked for Diwali (which usually means in cash and not in kind).

Having just had a glimpse of the road, I gave the bai a Rs. 100 note and a box of sweets to her two little daughters, considering that they had a long day ahead, to clean the battlefield-like-road to make it sparkle again.