DIWALI: A Time to Bring the Fire Alive

Diwali is the most widely celebrated festival of India. People celebrate Diwali as a festival for celebration and togetherness – they light candles, fire crackers, explode fireworks and light the whole house, locality, alleys, roads, streets as if there was no word called darkness ever known to the dictionary. Parents buy crackers for children, relatives and friends congregate, dress up in news clothes. Ladies prepare Indian delicacies like Jalebi, gulab jamun; they eat together and make fun, and live a life harmoniously. Life is that which makes you feel great… Diwali is the festivity to spark the fire in life, feel life, its warmth and goodness.

The picture today is little different from the make believe scenario of the concept of diwali. Sonia finds 72 people online among 422 facebook friends. There was a flood of updates and wishes for the festival, and innumerable photos of rangoli, lamps, tuni bulbs lined together decorating the balconies, pataka apps were getting forwarded from friends.  She has received about 70 messages in Watsapp wishing prosperity to her and her family. In reality she was alone in her 2 BHK flat, stuffed her head in her study table fighting with the former indulgence, memories, and occasionally surfing the channels in TV. She realized increased sensitivity towards past brings unmanageable excitement and realistic present creates unnatural sadness, which gets diffused among people with whomever you interact. This wasn’t the solo situation of Sonia alone, but also several like her.

The glowing tuni lights in her balcony has immensely lighted the ambiance to create awe in the midst of the growing evening and she was the loner who was trying to figure out some known rhetoric, a phone call came midway and changed the air.

-        -  “Hello, how are you dear?” said a husky male voice from the other end of the line.

-         -“Who is this?” Sonia tried to recollect the number. It was an ISD number.

-         -“I was remembering our childhood Diwali, so felt like calling you…”

On brief inquiry she came to know he was her elder cousin brother. To her amazement she got mixed feeling. She was happy to hear from him, but was aggrieved to know that he took 7 years to remember that once they have celebrated moments of precious innocent childhood. But she understands battling for ways of life demands time and unreasonable trust from loved ones, and her brother was here to acknowledge the fact.

A huge section of youth is sad. What is making them sad is unanswered. Unanswered questions keep cropping up in brain usually whenever we are idle. Pondering solitude is a harmful factor though we seem to be surrounded with gadgets, and the same questions keep pulsating within. Though there are apps, there is social media for finding friends. We can talk to stranger, make friends, new friends, newer friends, and reason strongly that we all are people of the same cosmos. But our own family is going apart from us. On Diwali, we watsapp our best friend stating strong reasons for our lazy alibis. With single increase in alibi, we grow dark from within…and live like a villain amidst the pompous luxuries of abundance. Later on in life we will be blaming someone else for not giving us time, or opportunity.

But this Diwali must bring light. This light must enlighten us in the road of prosperity, a real prosperity.

So, this Diwali do not ponder on who has not called you for 4 years, who has not turned up after your hearty invitation, and who is not there with you. If you are there then light yourself, enlighten yourself. What is not there that won’t come if you keep reiterating your thoughts on the same subject, and on the same time you are forgetting the things which are available around you. Quoting A.P.J Abdul Kalam,  “Whenever human beings find themselves alone, as a natural reaction, they start looking for company. Whenever they reach an impasse, they look to someone to show them the way out. Every recurrent anguish, longing and desire finds its own special helper”. So who are sad, find your helper, or help yourself. Light candles, fire crackers, and boom away all that is bad and sad…

Light, Light, Light….

“we all are born with divine fire in us; our efforts should be to give wings to this fire and fill the world with the glow of its goodness”.

Happy Diwali.

©Sulagna Dutta, 2014