Happy Diwali … so people called up to say and SMS me and others too. Perhaps one even passes a benevolent smile to a faintly acquainted-with stranger and murmurs, “happy diwali!’. So much for the spreading of humanitarian gesture and goodwill, all very exemplary in a world where such virtues are increasingly (or decreasingly perhaps) being available and noticed as printed words in Moral Science text books and 'How To Be A good Citizen' picture charts. All the more exemplary in a world laden with Ladens, with phallic structures in a paternal nation crumbling down to ground zero. All very good. And happy diwali once again.
I tried to stand in my 3rd floor balcony and do some meaning-making of the little blasts and flowering lights going on since the past four days now – two days prior to diwali it all started and now that diwali has over for more than 24 hours, it seems relentless in its determination and loyalty to the essence of the festival. And so, I was trying to make meaning —
And think —
Silent crackers shoot up in to the dark space we have named the sky (devoid of any stars in the thick smoke hanging over the city like a loving mother’s blanket since the past 4 days) and flower out into a dazzling and excruciatingly ephemeral nebulae of greens, red, purple and golden stars and dots, only to be sucked into a blackhole of nothingness in less than a matter of seconds. Some flowers are bigger, spread out over a wider dark expanse and are all golden in essence…occasionally a lone red dot shoots up and leaves a trail of burnt gases visible even in the dark, through the thick blanket of smoke. I calculated — each flower gone, a crisp hundred-rupee gone too. At least. The aesthetic and mature silent flowers go up primarily in the sky-spaces above the multi-storied apartments, those with three security guards in front, sitting with Entry/Exit stern registers, those with automatic Otis elevators and grass on the roof. The flowers are observed from the balconies and roof top with muted remarks and teenage innocence. A brief comment on the craftsman’s skill perchance escapes glossed lips. A vodka glass in a male hand and laughter over kebabs. The flowers vanish and the smoke blanket grows an inch thicker.
Those living in houses that have grass traces in front of their doorsteps, resort to crackers that can talk, shout, shriek and screech (the hell out of anybody with functioning auditory structure). These crackers have a language of their own. Thousands of such crackers keep following one another for days on end, determined to establish their identity and ontology even at the cost of causing little inconvenience to certain sections of society – those aged, ill, preparing for exams, writing thesis papers, trying to talk or sleep, etc. After all, one look at the history of all revolutions would reveal a cognition of sacrificing-the-lesser-in-return-of-a-greater-good. In return of instituting an existence.
As rocket after rocket and other quasi-cosmic bodies go up and either tumble down or simply get sucked away into the smoky void, I am reminded of the eternally tumbling money market, the stock market to be exact (after all, there is no place for inexactitude). The U.S global shares have tumbled down like Humpty Dumpty and have been awaiting the King’s horses and men – but the army is not seeming adequate enough. The egg is perhaps awaiting its last option to be taken up as poach — sunny side down. Yet the horses and men are trying to find the right glue, right thread and whatever else.
Irrespective of whether the Obamian government will give a curt smile to Asian (let’s deal with just the Indian. I don’t wish to be meta-patriotic in this abject existence!) BPOs, thereby pushing several youngsters (those with a penchant for shooting up purple-red flowers and drinking diwali with vodka) to non-white-collar jobs (other attractive colours might surely tumble out of the spectrum and adhere to other parts of the shirt, but one can never be too sure), we surely need to stop ourselves from getting more cracked up than ever before!
Thanks to good-old Newton, we know that (most of) what goes up, comes down. We can keep the critics and their exception-laden-charts out of our purview at the moment. Therefore, both crackers and shares will come down. Both have seen abundance of investments, both have evoked irrefutable promise and joy in the investors (as well as in the viewers—those viewing with a gleeful scrutiny, silently making a definite promise to do the same when the next occasion came) when they were charting their upward, heavenly trajectory. Somehow, each investor, each Wall Street, Dalal Street, drinking-diwali-with-vodka and bursting cracker-chains amidst brick stacks, humanbeing, even after repeated, infallible evidence, hopes that this time it will go up higher, stay up longer, dazzle more brightly. Perhaps this time. Just this time. But each time the bull becomes a bear, each time the flower withers away just too soon, each time the dream seems blinded. Blinded by the smoky blanket … by the crashing loss of money, of life and its meaning. Of a healthier environment.
Neither the twin towers, nor the sensex, nor the shooting up crackers, stay up long enough. Should we learn a little and henceforth try to, at least believe in its downward trajectory? Perhaps with some less smoke blinding us, less noise deafening us and less shattered dreams, we can do a little better with a life less cracked, a life less glued up, a life less poached, sunny side down. Happy diwali, nonetheless. Whatever the happiness is all about!
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