Diwali---- The monologues of an effusive mind

Diwali, the festival of lights is just a hand stretch away and as I am feverishly keying in my desktop I can already hear the din and bustle of people availing of leave to visit their homeplace/vacations etc. I still have vivid recollection of my native place and my childhood home where Diwali was celebrated with such pomp and grandeur that it managed to clung into some special place of my heart.The popular notion was that putting the crackers in the Sun for a while would make them burst with better resonance and O’ boy! did we try those entire thingamajigs so that we could have the better ‘blast’?! The kol-gos (plantain) bedecked with diyas (chaki) and the Maa-made sweets might be a thing of the past and we can only long for them but I guess that’s what life’s all about—you like the things you miss the most (or, issit the other way round?)!

The deafening noise of the ‘chocolate’ bombs, the spry phatt of the red ‘Jolokiya’ bomb and the ‘swoooosh’ of the ‘Rockets’ managed to paint some stupendously vivid picture into my infant mind. The dark night ornamented with diyas and the get-togethers we’ve had during those days are great snapshots for posterity.After many a blast (!) the small town boy grew up (still trying)… Went through the arduous task of being a ‘student’ (tried hard to bluff my way thru’) which took me to many places all over India and ensured that I won’t be home for Diwali… serious pangs of home-sickness was morphined only by those childhood memories—imagining a 1.5ft tall kid with his ‘Band-of-Brothers’ trying hard to play it ‘Brave’ with nothing but a single bead of ‘Jolokiya/Mirchi’ bomb!

Moreover, serious issues related to child labor in the Cracker-making Industry have dampened my spirits in the later years. The plight of those unfortunate children kneading those harmful chemicals in sweat-shops in abominable working conditions and low/no wages was too much anti-climactic to the spirit of Diwali.

I really don’t know where I would land up this Diwali… maybe I would go back to my Playstation-2 and whack off the heads of some gangsta’ with my Uzi or would challenge Mohammad Ali to a bout of Boxing. Or I can lay my hand on the half-finished Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or would even try to watch one of those Akira Kurosawa’s DVD that I’ve bought some time back. Or I can still go out with my Digicam and roam the streets of Rajajinagar in search of another 1.5 ft tall kid who still thinks that bursting ‘Mirchi’ bomb was the most daring thing in the world!!

Or, to prove my Capricornian gene I can light a solitary diya on the balcony of my flat and lock my room and go alongwith Paulo Coelho on THE ROAD TO SANTIAGO!!

And as the Jharkhand gal said it in Chak De India—“Happy Diwali”