Diwali (Deepawali), the festival of lights, lamps and diyas, the festival of fire crackers, of rangolis
and also the festival of noise and air pollution is being celebrated in India and the world over.
Diwali always transports me back in time to my childhood days. How we used to wait for the diwali vacations to start. We used to have our semister exams just before diwali hols. The last exams usually either moral science or community living.
All of us used to write even after the final bell rings for other papers, but for these subjects, all would have finished atleast half hour early and would be excitedly looking around for the final bell to ring. On the final bell everyone would rush out as if there tails are on fire.
We would exchange our plans for diwali with friends, buy those crude mud bombs from outside school gate. These mud bombs were small round mud balls covered with glitter paper. They had those explosive material inside.
We used to lurk around unsuspecting victims and throw the mud bomb hard near there feet. The tiny explosion would cause them to jump like crazy much to our amusement.
Holidays at home were fun. It involved helping in cleaning the house, sometimes painting the walls too. Help mom prepare sweets (many of them disappeared during the making), then putting up the diwali lights.
A couple of days before diwali we used to shop for crackers and earthen diyas.
We would have much disagreement whether or not to buy bombs (atom bomb and hydrogen bombs). Rockets were a strict no no. Dad always feared that it may go fall inside someones house.
And for us kids, after all this helping parents stuff, we had the fun thing.
That was to build the mud fort. All we used to care was to build the best, biggest and tallest fort in our area.
A day or two before diwali, group of friends would set out with tools to gather soil,
water then, stamp on them to make a nice smooth dough. Then we used to collect whatever scrap we could like wood pieces, cardboards, old news papers etc.
Next was to plan the fort. That took considerable discussion to finally reach the conclusion on how the fort should look.
The hardest was to assemble the thing, but it was a passion which everyone took mighty seriously.
We used to work through the afternoon, sometimes even forgetting lunch to build the dream castle. It took a day or two to dry up and ready for diwali explosion. Till then we had to protect it from predators (read other groups) from damaging it.
But now when I think about it, I dont understand why we took so much pain in making and preserving it when on diwali day we used to fill it with atom and hydrogen bombs (crackers) and see it blast to pieces.
Another of our pastime was to buy toy pistols. We used to get roles or dots with small explosive charges. The pistols used to ne loaded with them and we run around playing chor-police (thief and police).
Ooh how I miss those days. I feel so sad for the young crops of today. They dont have space at all to do these things. They are now confined to the house and virtual reality, maybe playing these games on there comp.
But sadly they do not know its such fun to be out there playing and create the mud forts and bursting them with atom bombs in real.
Heres wishing all you guys a very happy diwali. Have a fun filled diwali.
amen.
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