Deepavali Reminisces

Every child born and brought up in India has very fond memories of Deepavali or atleast s/he must remember the time s/he spent in the burn ward. Fortunately for me and my mum, I never even had a small burn, I came pretty close though to burning down the house.

For myself and my little sister Deepavali used to start a couple of weeks earlier than the actual festival. We used to use our pocket money to buy the 'fire crackers' and use to light them before our house with a lighted incense stick. My sister was sorta Tomboy, while all other girls would stand back and let the boys do the dirty work, my sister would fight with me, and snatch my share of crackers too.

My dad used take both of us to his friend's grocery shop in the bazaar in Nellore; its no more a grocery shop during the Diwali season, its a fireworks shop and huge one. There were thousands of 'hand-itching' fireworks on display. Its a boy's fantasy come true; "10 lakh Chain" on big box screamed at me, "Double Decker Bombs" another box wanted my attention. The king of all the crackers were "Lakshmi Firecrackers". Literally they packed a punch and only Men of strong heart would light them. My dad became a instant hero to not only to me but to all my friends when he lighted these "Lakshmi crackers" holding this cracker with one hand and lighted with another. The fuse was very short and would burn real fast. Whenever I would light them, I would run real fast after seeing the fuse alight. My dad would wait till the last moment, i.e. when the spark reaches the main body of the bomb. He then with a flourish would throw it in the air and it would explode in mid air, with so much glory, that it can only witnessed and enjoyed.
Lakshmi crackers

Coming to our Diwali shopping, We would fill our baskets trying to optimize our budgets. We wanted to maximise the time spent outside bursting the crackers, if we buy only crackers we would finish in no time at all, so we would fill our baskets with varieties of fireworks like a flower pot, vishnu chakram and such. Then comes the ritual of drying the fireworks in the sun to make them crisp and devoid of any moisture, an age old wisdom passed in the children's world to eliminate duds.

The festivities start a day early, on the day before Deepavali known as Naraka Chaturdasi. My father would wakes up at 4:30 am and would make us brush our teeth, that's one of his pet peeves, he cant stand an un washed mouth in the morning. By the time we finished brushing out teeth, we would realize that its the time to light up our 10% of our cache. We would finish our quota in no time and would have tough time, keeping our hands off from the main cache. Mum would make us take us an elaborate shower with soap nuts, with its acrid juice going and burning our eyes. We would wear our new clothes and would hit the streets looking and inspecting our friends' caches. We would treated with lots of sweats where ever we go.

I hate long posts and this getting too long, time to end it, In a few word: We used to have lots of fun!