Beneath an assortment of pretty hanging lamps, yellow lights
glistening off their glassy colors - magenta, green, neon blue, surrounded by rangolis made of beads, lined by diyas and amidst the sound and sparkle
all around, I feel blissfully engulfed in my favorite time of the year –
Diwali. No festival touches my heart quite like it. I am not sure what exactly
it is about this time though. Maybe because when I was a bit younger this was
the longest vacation with a beautiful festival right in the middle of it. Or maybe
because two of my favorite people have their birthdays during this time, or because
my favorite zodiac sign falls this month. Or it is just that it marks the
beginning of a season I cherish and the way this festival’s warmth
makes the season’s undeniable chill bearable. It could possibly be just my
sweet tooth speaking, with all the festival sweets being gulped without a care.
Or maybe it’s because I learn to be a bit brave during this festival, you know,
and light fire crackers that I am scared of. I don’t know what it is exactly. Long
list, yes. Perhaps it is all of this. And maybe more.
I think there’s a feeling quite like no other when you light
a firecracker. I am way too familiar with this feeling for every single year
that I have celebrated Diwali (about around two decades now!). The moment when
you try and pick a fire cracker, gauge and decide which one is worth the risk,
it is interesting decision making right there. Choosing between brave and
sparkly. Sometimes even the most sparkly is the bravest choice. Taking it,
placing it in a safe spot, away from everyone, then staring at it with the
sparkler in hand. I can’t quite tell you the feeling, looking at the open black
and grey end of a firecracker, with a sparkler in hand, knowing full well if I don’t take the risk it’s going to
extinguish soon, and I’ll have to get another one. But finally I manage to touch
it, with my trembling unsure hands and then move away as fast as possible,
hoping, looking. Looking for that faint small first tiny little sparkle which
gives hope. Hope that something beautiful is going to happen next. That I’ll
see lights like no other. Blue, green, red, yellow, white, silver, emerging out
of that tiny little act of bravery. I think I like that feeling. I feel that it is so similar to so many things we do
every day. I think the magic of the festival for me, lies in that anticipation
of seeing the faint sparkle turn into something brilliant. It feels similar to
many incidents which are filled with those poignant moments of irrepressible hope
that it astounds me how much hope means to us.
If you are a programmer and you hit run- waiting for
something to happen as you expect, or you are a doctor – and you see on your
phone that the patient whom you prescribed something is calling up to give you
an update, you are a student – and with trembling but hopeful hands you open
your scorecard or you’re just a little kid looking at the faint sparkle of a
Diwali firecracker, waiting, hoping, wishing with every atom of your being for
it to turn into something beautiful, I think it is the same. Hope is the same.
Beautiful, unsure, positive, giving us a reason to live, giving us something to
work towards and making us take risks we wouldn’t otherwise, and taking them with
all we got in that moment. Sometime though, the firecracker goes dud. It
doesn’t burst. Our faces fall. But we try again, with another one of our sparklers. Sometimes, when ours get over, we
borrow them from a friend. We give another chance to that hope. And when it
does light us the second time around, we realize, we always have the power to
reignite. To light up. With all we got. And maybe the best part of it is that everyone
can see the light we started. J
