Come on baby light my fire.....

arrite too late for a diwali related post, and I had such nice sentences running in my head.
I think I've out grown Diwali. seriously. these days its not so much about lights, festivity as is about Corporate Kaju Katli Give aways and bumper draws promising Cars at the clothing store. Please tell me if anyone actually wins those "Bumper Draws"??? Anyone you know? Please because I've filled 5 billion of those and I've never won anything.

But the vanishing of the Diwali charm (And I think that sentence was wrongly framed, but its 1 AM and I'm still at work, so spare me!) is what's making me a tad sad. I remember what diwali meant to us as kids. Preperations would begin about a week before the grand 3 days, and that would be heralded by mum preparing the batter for real crispy chakulees. Another thing that symbolized the official onset of Diwali was the building of the family Khandeel. Nobody here makes it, but in bombay its really popular. Khandeel is a sort of lantern and some of my fondest memories are of Dad building the Khandeel, with Coloured paper and gum spread astray on the dinning table. Can you imagine glitter strwn all over the solemn Dinning table?. And then we'd get our boxes of crackers. Our Dad always got my brother and I identical boxes of crackers, and then I would ceremoniously hand-over bombs and other despicably loud crackers to my bro, while I held on to other sissy stuff, like Flower pots. I liked flower pots. They came alive with a whoosh and then they burned out and didn't split anybody's Ear drums.

We had to have a piece de resistance too, something that'd make the neighbours look up in stifled awe and envy. We had to. and when you're 12 and competing with the neighbour hood apartment kids, with apartment Diwali budgets, Its absolutely Important. Ours was called the "Shree harikota". It spun like mad in the sky and then burst into a shower. Too wowowow for words. One year we experimented with this thing called "Rainbow" basically 7 multi hued projectiles hurled into the air, but unfortunately, Rainbow became parallel to the ground, while hurling these aforementioned projectiles, and Babli the neighbour's labrador never quite forgave us for the trauma so inflicted.

Diwali also brings back memories of my petrified dogs. Have you ever held a Dog during Diwali. Nothing quite breaks one's heart as that. The heart beats like its going to explode any minute, The body shivers and yet in the eyes complete numbness. I hated having to feret out my dogs, hiding in a dark corner, from under the bed . I guess that marked arrival of anti- Diwali- anti- child labour- anti- air pollution phase. and also lets face it, some of us get tired with the scurrying-after-the-cracker-has-been-lit routine. I prefer watching all the fireworks in a worn out pajama on the terrace. its so much more fun.

This time round, the rockets have improved immensely, we didn't have such good stuff 6 years back sigh!. Well I guess its all for the best, Me being a mute spectator, besides I need to atone for what happened to babli, the neighbour's labrador.