THE DIWALI FERVOUR

I see a blog on Diwali (pardon me Chakra) in almost all the Indian blogsites and so I suddenly developed the fear of being alienated for not publishing one on mine.

This is one festival which is universally celebrated all through India beyond the barriers of caste, creed and religion, unlike certain other festivals which are celebrated only in some states of the country. When I say religion, I mean we can see even Muslims and Christians bursting crackers in their houses.

Frankly I am no different and even now I nurture the same passion for this festival as I used to do in my childhood days. May be it is one of those things that remains with you forever. The only difference is that now I have begun to look beyond myself in terms of celebration. I realise this is one festival that glaringly brings out the difference between the have’s and have-nots. All other festivals in India has more religious value and celebrated within the four walls of our home, but for Diwali, which is known more for its extravaganza in terms of display of dress, sweets and crackers. I am not a socialist or against such extravagant celebrations. After all those who spend work hard for earning it and can also be said to be fortunate enough to be blessed with the fruits of hard work.

We always used to go for a drive in the night of Diwali just to have a feel of the festivities going around in the city lit with various kinds of illumination and crackers and it definitely helped forgetting the term “darkness” atleast for a moment. But this drive also used to expose us to lot of poor and less fortunate children without even the basic dress on them searching the roads and pavements trying to pick some un-burst crackers and jumping in inexplicable joy when they find a single piece of cracker. It is an irony that despite the illuminations and light all around, these children are still not able to fight their darkness. We all know that you cannot measure darkness and it is most striking only when there is light all around.

If you visit T.Nagar in Chennai or for that matter any shopping center in India now, you would find that demand far exceeds supply and people are ready to spend any amount of money to celebrate this festival. In this scenario, I don’t think I would be asking for too much if each of the shops collect a small cess from the customer, on each purchase made and use the amount collected to provide some new clothing and cracker to the underprivileged children, so that they do not remain in darkness atleast for this one day in an year, when the whole world around them is illuminated.

This work can also be done by some voluntary organization by collecting donations through house to house campaign, but the fact remains that when it comes to donation many of us would think twice to give that extra rupee at the same time, we would not mind paying even ten rupees extra to get our choice of dress material. So sometimes a shopkeeper can collect ten rupees from a particular customer as cess, where we can get only one rupee in the form of donation.

WHAT I SAID ABOVE IS JUST A SMALL THOUGHT AND NOT MEANT TO DISSUADE ANYBODY FROM CELEBRATING DIWALI EXTRAVAGANTLY BUT ONLY TO INSPIRE US INTO HELPING SOME MORE PEOPLE TO CELEBRATE IT EVEN IF IN A VERY SMALL WAY.