Happy Diwali folks !

India is shining this Diwali, economy is doing well, country is rapidly progressing, the sensex is trading at 21k and so on ... Even if you leave these indicators aside, overall there is a considerable improvement in standards of living, along with it the kind of celebrations during festivals have also become much grander. From the time I remember, Diwali/Deepavali used to be celebrated with people getting attired in new clothes, decorating their homes, getting together with family along with lot of sweets and lot of fireworks. When we were young the fireworks were the highlight, there were lot of safety concerns those days, perhaps all that made it more appealing and thrilling with that hint of danger involved !

In 80s and early 90s, the amount of crackers and other items were limited due to budgetary restrictions; But gradually as standards of living went up the ability to splurge on big festivals also went up and the amount of money spent on firecrackers, the options available and noise generated have also gone up quite a lot. Until a few years back, I have heard people mention with pride in Tamil Nadu, the amount of money they spent on buying crackers and other fireworks. This used to be some kind of indicator of social status , the louder and more colourful and longer your firecracker orgy, the more ahead you were in society or something on those lines !!!

I wonder how firecrackers, 'flowerpots' etc got included as part of celebration. My guess is that since this is a celebration of dispelling darkness and vanquishing the enemy, crackers are perhaps able to symbolize this well with the visual effect as well as the sound effect.

I live in a neighborhood which is dotted with so many high-rise flats where Diwali was celebrated with lots of crackers and firework display this year . I started writing this after seeing a few birds which had curled up in a corner in my balcony while the crackers were creating a huge din outside. Normally when I open the balcony door and step out these pigeons,if they were around fly away immediately, yesterday night i saw them cowering in a corner and then understood why !

While we celebrate we trouble so many of these innocent birds and animals who get so disturbed by the unnatural flashes of light and loud noises which totally scare and confuse them.

Fire-crackers may work symbolically and I do admit I enjoyed it when I was a kid, but the cons far outweigh whatever pros they offer . Kids these days have so many avenues for fun anyways ! Air and noise pollution affect everyone, especially the most vulnerable sections - Children and senior citizens and of course animals and birds in the area.

Thankfully more and more people are moving away from firecrackers of late . Govt also is enforcing rules more strictly. Today morning in my daily newspaper in the front page between various Ads for electronic goods and real estate projects managed to find a news item which mentioned that the level of noise pollution (due to fire-crackers ) during Diwali this year have been lower than last year. Hope the trend continues and we all realize that there are better ways to celebrate the festival of lights and prosperity and to spread joy and celebrate it with near and dear ones !