The Lonesome Road

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Fireworks 1, originally uploaded by shadowfall.

You know, Divali always brings out mixed feelings. I love the family coming together, the sense of happiness and of course - the food.

But Divali also has it’s sad side. It’s supposed to be a festival of light and color. It has degenerated into a festival of noise - high level noise. You have people who wake up at 6 in the morning to light firecrackers which have a decibel rating of 125Db. Not the best thing to be woken up to. These crackers are extremely powerful and can cause harm to the people in the immediate area - but no one seems to bother.

Also, most of these firecrackers are made using child labour. It’s an issue that most people tend to ignore - or worse explain away with twisted logic like - if we don’t buy them those poor children will be out of jobs. I really don’t know what to say to such explanations. This year - despite my protests, we bought a few firecrackers. Almost all of them produce light and negligible amount of sound. Oh yeah - on the boxes - prominently displayed is the legend - Not made using child labour. Yeah right.

One final aspect and I shall end this ranthing. The photo that you see is of an anar - it’s a light fountain for want of a better description. This is the amount of smoke that is released as it starts to light up. This is just one firecracker. Multiply this by the number of people and the number of crackers and you will have an idea of the pollution that is caused.

It’ not that I don’t like this time - it’s fun. Even so - there are some negative aspects that just cannot be ignored.

Later people. Let’s have a colorful (and less noisy) Divali