This year's Diwali is around the corner. The city is as usual ready to embrace the festival of lights with a delightful fervor. I already see placards outside popular sweet stalls stating that they are ready to take bulk orders for sweets. When i was young(in school), buying sweets from a stall was not very common and there were not so many sweets shops around as they exist today. Unlike other festivals, sweets used to be made in large quantities at least 2 weeks before the festival. I came home everyday with my tongue trickling with droplets of saliva and taste buds ready to devour the variety of sweets that were made at home. Things changed a bit afterwards. Distributing sweets to employees in offices especially for Diwali became a practice Both my parents were employed and, we waited for the sweet boxes they would bring home. We sometimes snatched those boxes from our parents while on the way, even before they could reach home. We relished them more as they would have exotic varieties of sweets than what my mother knew to make at home. For crackers, my father's office had a cooperative society that sold crackers at a price slightly lesser than the market prices. I would keep inquiring my father about the date on which the stalls would open lest i miss anything on my list as the crackers used to get sold out in those cooperative stalls very quickly. Buying crackers used to be done with so much fanfare at that time. We discussed in our friends circle as to when each of us will be buying crackers. At times, i used to take friends for buying crackers. What an happiness that was. Even crores of rupees would not get us back those days or the feeling. The energy and the spirit have dwindled down over the years. We don't celebrate now. But the fervor seems to be less. Today, I see even kids refraining from lighting crackers now as they are told by their teachers that child labor is involved. But i am pretty sure that these kids miss the excitement and amusement that we expected and enjoyed every moment on that day. Most of the time, Ignorance is Bliss.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Diwali Again
This year's Diwali is around the corner. The city is as usual ready to embrace the festival of lights with a delightful fervor. I already see placards outside popular sweet stalls stating that they are ready to take bulk orders for sweets. When i was young(in school), buying sweets from a stall was not very common and there were not so many sweets shops around as they exist today. Unlike other festivals, sweets used to be made in large quantities at least 2 weeks before the festival. I came home everyday with my tongue trickling with droplets of saliva and taste buds ready to devour the variety of sweets that were made at home. Things changed a bit afterwards. Distributing sweets to employees in offices especially for Diwali became a practice Both my parents were employed and, we waited for the sweet boxes they would bring home. We sometimes snatched those boxes from our parents while on the way, even before they could reach home. We relished them more as they would have exotic varieties of sweets than what my mother knew to make at home. For crackers, my father's office had a cooperative society that sold crackers at a price slightly lesser than the market prices. I would keep inquiring my father about the date on which the stalls would open lest i miss anything on my list as the crackers used to get sold out in those cooperative stalls very quickly. Buying crackers used to be done with so much fanfare at that time. We discussed in our friends circle as to when each of us will be buying crackers. At times, i used to take friends for buying crackers. What an happiness that was. Even crores of rupees would not get us back those days or the feeling. The energy and the spirit have dwindled down over the years. We don't celebrate now. But the fervor seems to be less. Today, I see even kids refraining from lighting crackers now as they are told by their teachers that child labor is involved. But i am pretty sure that these kids miss the excitement and amusement that we expected and enjoyed every moment on that day. Most of the time, Ignorance is Bliss.
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