I feel I should share a moment where I felt the opposite feelings together -
Happiness and Sadness. Yeah, it was Diwali time and it is needless to say that it is the time for gala celebrations from North to South irrespective of where you are located. Before moving on to describing the moment I would like to tell a few lines on Diwali and happenings during the festival.
And the debates like "should we really fire crackers? " or "is buying crackers a waste of money?" or "crackers are nuisance and cause of a noise pollution" or in any other context will happen if not at a bigger level, it will happen between your friends and close ones.
So what exactly Diwali mean? For me its time to relax, enjoy, feel happy, have sweets and many many other sweet things you can think of. Even few of my friends (for that matter my better half ) would say "is this the age to fire crackers?" or "I have not liked it even during my younger days". Is there any specific age or some cut-off for anything - not only for firing crackers? It is perfect as long as one likes to do it. So if one does not like to do it, so be it. That does not mean they should expect others to follow them as well.
I know some of you must be feeling a bit jittery about the .Hope, after reading the content below, you will agree to why I was elaborating it above.
It was that momentous Diwali day. It started as it had in the previous years. We got up early and had oil bath (maybe not like the usual bath, at-least we had oil applied all over the body :)). After having some eatables, we started firing crackers - almost all types starting from Bijili, Lakshmi crackers, Sparrow/ crackers, atom bombs to garland crackers - in the morning. We were so happy and so immersed in firing that we seldom noticed the lads watching it around the corner.
When I was about to fire a garland cracker, I went to that corner and found a few lads watching at us. I asked them
"what are you doing here?"
And got the immediate response "watching you fire crackers".
"Why are you not doing it? Go and fire crackers"
"We don't have crackers at home"
For a moment, I was lost. I called them, after some hesitance, they came and I gave few crackers which we have bought and asked them to fire it either here or at their home. They started firing them near our place itself. Maybe their parents would not feel good or the lads might be punished for getting the crackers from outsiders.
Whatever it might be, I was more than happy at the moment for seeing them firing crackers happily and at the same time felt really sad for the lads who could not spare for few crackers. I know few lads might come just like that to have extra crackers. But I felt that was not the moment to validate if the lads were really not having crackers or they wanted extra. When I watched them fire the crackers so happily, it instilled a little more happiness in me on that auspicious day.
Let anybody say anything - its a waste of time and money, noise pollution etc. I felt that if I can make a few lads happy by giving a little percentage of what I had, I am content and happy. So at-least for few such kids, I buy crackers every year without fail. Hope some of you are upto this already. Thanks guys.
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