The Wall-E*

Spending Diwali away from home sucks. I have spent a good number of Diwalis in the last 10 years away from home, at various hostels, doing pretty much nothing. But this one sucks more, because I don't have the general hostel crowd around as well. And I know that this time, for a change, I could afford to go home despite the distance, and time did not permit. But I'll survive.

Was woken up around 6:30 am today. I had known since I was a kid, thanks to a Tam friend in school, that Diwali celebrations begin in the morning in South India, with oil baths, ganga-snanam and such stuff. I also knew that bursting crackers starts along with that right from the morning too. But it turns out that not only are crackers burst in the morning, there's apparently some sort of competition among kids to see which home starts doing it the earliest. My landlord's kids won hands down this time.

But, surprisingly enough, I did not wake up cursing them or at least irritated as I would have in most cases. I was standing in my balcony a while back, watching them play, and their happiness was infectious. Reminded me of the time, ages ago, when bursting crackers used to be fun and not fretting over how I am literally burning money and creating pollution along with it. I am growing really old now.

But, all said and done, I think it's a bit of a waste, or even more of a waste than it normally is, bursting crackers during the day. Crackers are fun because of the light and sound, but this way one just gets to 'enjoy' the sound.

And also, the idiot that I am, the absolute glee with which these small kids in my lane were playing with scary looking crackers made me think of this - we probably train kids in India too well to handle things that go boom. No wonder so many of them start playing with bigger versions when they grow old. We deserve our crackers. And our RDX.

* This usage is a friend's idea, and is stolen from his GTalk status. So often, for me, thinking up the title of a post takes about the same time as writing the whole post. Couldn't think of anything else for this one.