After spending a whole day diligently wishing everybody ‘Happy Diwali’, a thought just crossed my mind: what are we so happy about? Maybe it is the noise, or the pungent burning smell, or maybe it is hypoxia but the question did cross my mind; momentarily though. Very quickly I banished it. Don’t be pessimistic, think positive…
I succeeded. Therefore after much deliberation I have come up with a list of things we should be happy about this Diwali. You are welcome to add to the list.
- Thanks to the crackers the ambient air itself becomes a powerful insecticide, leading to freedom from insects or mosquitoes.
- The noise level ensures that reading habits improve in this season, because we can’t really hear what’s on TV.
- The millions of cheap electrical lights we buy helps put food on the table for thousands of workers in China.
- All the ‘light up every building’ through the night gives the electricity companies an opportunity to load test their grid. And also it helps the confused migrating birds find the way to Bharatpur and Sariska.
- It is a good time of the year to ‘recycle’ good cheer. Send the candle stand that came from here to there. And the ‘mithai’ from there to here. If there are some casseroles still unopened that came as wedding gift, this is a good time to recycle them too.
- Attendance in government office improves around this time. Without exception the postman, the linesman the cleaning crew and everybody else you never saw all year long, will turn up for work, and show up on your door too.
- It is the best time of the year to train young doctors to deal with emergencies. If you happen to be in the burns ward you are likely to learn more in one night than most doctors in most parts of the world will learn in their entire life. As an aside, it may be a great business idea to run paid workshops for western doctors to learn emergency burn care.
- Sometimes the firework in the sky lands on houses with thatched roofs. That is one efficient way to spring clean the city – easy to get rid of the unauthorised shanty towns.
- Cracker factories hum with activity for a while giving employment to thousands of kids. If children were not the preferred labour in the cracker factories some of these kids would be forced into very unsavoury ways of making a living.
May you find peace and contentment this Diwali. We can let the goddess Lakshmi find a house of a widow of a farmer in Vidharba.
Note: Sometimes my writing does not deliver the intended message. Assuming that this is little note is one such piece let me clarify that I was attempting irony ;-).
First published on November 5, 2010
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