Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Diya jalao, jagmag jagmag...

Happy Deepavali, all!

Just back from a 6-day assignment. I wish I'd had a day to prepare for the festival, but I landed late last night and haven't enough go to make a celebration of it.

The morning meal was regular, the sweets are bought not homemade, the puja was delayed - I feel the festival but I cannot make it all-festive for my home. This bothers me. Some unnamed obligation to do the right thing, sadness that I don't make too much of an effort, that the old ways fall away to the modern insistence of not being hassled, of doing the easy thing all the time. The evening's session will be better, I promise myself.

But I have something to console myself with. As I made my way back home yesterday, my hopping flight stopped in Chennai. And what a wonderful sight it was! The city was lit with festoons of light and as the plane lingered in the low skies, pyrotechnics in various colours and types, one after the other. Street after street went up in celebration and for once, the birds' eye view wasn't of a metropolis peopled with anonymous denizens, probably grimly going about their business of living - these were fellow human beings, kin of sorts, joyously marking the onset of winter. Each of those rockets had someone below -- a man, woman or child -- who had enthusiastically let it into the sky, and was now looking up in expectation, his or her face lit by the colourful sparks they had unleashed. It was lovely. What luck to be in the air on the eve of Diwali.

2 comments:

footloose said...

oh what fun, sheetlvyas! i've always loved being up in the air, but what a bonus to get a top view of the diwali fireworks!

Sheetal said...

Exactly! In contrast Hyderabad was tamer, you know? Probably it was much later in the evening and they'd gone off to their dinners, maybe. Or they're reserving the big guns for today. Madras was all out!