Happy Diwali everyone

I awoke to an eerie silent morning. Eerie because its diwali and I have grown up with diwali crackers bursting from 4 am in the morning, much to the chagrin of our neighbours. Is it because of the recession or is it just the overall bad mood in the air? Or have people started waking up to realize the bad effects of noise and air pollution? I personally believe that crackers only stand for child labour and pollution. The deathly silence followed till afternoon where I only heard an agonizing cries of a dog ( I later learnt that a himesh reshammiya song was playing in the neighbourhood).
I was confused whether to rejoice about the prevailing better sense or to mull on the sadness of a dull festive season. Just then I heard a huge bang followed by squealing, screaming kids. This was followed by the extensive ‘laar’. More crackers filled the silence with a deafening roar.
Ahh… its diwali !!!

Golden years

"Yipeeee!!!", I heard my younger brother scream as he flung his school books at the far corner of the bedroom. It doesnt take a nuclear scientist to guess that his Diwali vacations have started. I am already envious coz its been a while since i ever experienced anything close to a vacation ( study leave doesnt count).
Nostalgia takes me to my younger days ( not that im too old now), where we kids used to frolic in the society garden the whole day. The same kids who had a hard time waking up for school, were up and about by 7 am to play cricket, much to the surprise of our mothers.
By afternoon ( if we ever came home for lunch) it would be time for 'FUN TIME' , the great show on DD2 ( yes ...there was a time before cable TV )
Evening were spent in all sorts of games like lagori, tag, hide and seek ( yes...there was a time before PLAYSTATION too). I remember the huge jamun trees in our garden, we would have a great time picking those and end up staining all our clothes and faces a deep stain of purple( there was a time before mall hopping too).
Badminton and volleyball was reserved for the nights with focus lights.
Not really keen on returning home at night, we would even have a small camp fire thingy with the usual dose of ghost stories. Diwali was a time for fire crackers, sweets, new clothes.
The entire holiday was spent in mirth, festivity laughter, games......happiness....limitless joy.
By the end we would realise that a school project was pending and would spend the last night breaking our heads on it.
It literally brings tears to my eyes when I reminisce those golden times.
I wish..........I wish I could turn back time....at put it on a still mode.
I wish.........

HINDUISM ???. NOT REALLY?

My dear Hindu fanatic friend,

It is nice to see that you care for our religion and would do anything to help preserve it...be it burning someone alive or rape a hapless woman...or displace some poor guy from his home and livelihood.
Its nice to see that you would go up in arms to prevent conversion but wouldnt really care a damn about farmers ( hindu or otherwise) comitting suicide .
It seems nice that you have discovered that Christian evangelists are luring poor people by offering them bread and shelter and making them convert.

But at the same time what are we hindus doing? Why cant we help out the needy. Where are all our great leaders when hundreds of kids die of malnutrition? Where is the help when people are trying to come to terms with great natural calamities?
What are we really achieving by thrashing some poor guy whose first thought in the morning is how he can feed his child today?

My idea of hinduism was a non violent, tolerant religion that taught us to live like brothers.

If someone builds a tall building and you want a bigger one........is it wiser to build a taller one or break down the floors of the other one?

At this time I am reminded of a quote by Mahatma Gandhi

" AN EYE FOR AN EYE ...MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND"