I am writing after a very long time. It sometimes happens that we just run out of ideas or sometimes we just run out of the will to write our thoughts down even if they might be plentiful in the mind. The bygone festival of Deepawali produced a thought in my head that eventually won over me and asked me to pen it down even though it has been more than two weeks since the festival. Festivals have deep significance in all cultures. There are special reasons why those festivals are celebrated and in many cases, I personally feel that the practice was originally started to achieve a higher goal of personal development. But is the original spirit prevailing today? That is a question I have been pondering over since few weeks.
The smoke and sound of the Deepawali festival found itself a strong opposition more than a decade ago from the mind that is currently typing these words. I could personally feel choked when I walked out one fine morning, the next of Deepawali. The whole city was covered in smog. And there was lack of the usual morning freshness. I realized that what was different about that morning was that lakhs of people had been adding pollutants for hours and hours together all the way from evening to early morning. This left a lasting impression on me and since that day I have never used fireworks. Just one of those incidents which change your way of thinking forever!
This recent Deepawali was nothing different from the one I had seen more than a decade ago. The same bursting of crackers, the extreme loud ones and the same competitive spirit between people testing who would be the loudest and the longest! But the circumstances were different. The number of species had probably gone down. The area covered by forests had gone down for sure. The levels of pollution had gone up. The climatic shifts were apparent. Sparrows and some other birds could no longer be seen except in the outskirts of the city. Two days later, when I was at the bank counter, the familiar lady teller asked me, “How did you celebrate Deepawali?” I said, “I was reading the Ramayana!” And indeed I did read Ramayana on that day. And she smiled and at me and said, “Pleasing to my ears it is to hear those words for nobody today seems to be doing that!”
We have gone overboard, I feel, as far as torturing the earth is concerned. And on Deepawali, with the regular attitude, “One day won’t make a difference!” we add new kinds of pollutants in these few days of festivals. And these pollutants are not acceptable to nature! Nature’s mechanisms do not have the capability of doing anything positive to the chemical particles that get added to the atmosphere on this day. There are not your regular vehicular emissions, parts of which can be recycled by surrounding green cover! Let us shift (abruptly?) to a more religious issue.
What is Deepawali about? For those of you who might have forgotten, it is a day that marks the return of Lord Rama to Ayodhya after achieving the purpose for which he had stepped in this world, the destruction of evil. We mark this day by creating an Awaali of Deepas i.e. a corridor of light. And that is what Deepavali is meant to be! Make a corridor of lights near your houses and spend time reading or hearing about the epic that elucidates the details. Where did the sound and the smoke come from? They never were and never will have a place in the true religious meaning of this festival.
Let me take you to the very beginning of Ramayana. The Earth deity makes a eloquent plea to the Lord Brahma to do something about the torture and pain being inflicted upon it by the Rakshasas under the rule of Ravana. And it is the Brahma prays for the Eternal Being to incarnate in human form on Earth and take it on Himself to destroy the evil of these Rakshasas. What is the relevance here? Deepawali marks the end of the torture on Earth (and other abodes) and today we celebrate it by torturing Mother Earth even more! We explode loudest of crackers that scare the mute animals to death. We use carelessly manufactured smoke spitting monsters and torture Earth like hell. We burst crackers in front of hospitals without a second thought to the babies in the incubators and the patients on the ventilators. We commit more sin on this holy day than any other day! Is this what Deepawali is?
I am not asking you all to zero down fireworks! I have always seen it in people many times. Their thoughts move only from one extreme to another extreme! The above paragraph would have shifted their minds to a Deepawali celebration which is devoid of all fireworks! I don’t mind if that happens but I know that the common mind is not prepared to do that. But can we not spare one moment and at least aim to minimize as much as possible? Could we not resort to perhaps a newer variety of fireworks which perhaps are less polluting? Is it really necessary to have the loud ones? Is it really necessary to burst them for hours and hours together? It is really necessary to do it front of hospitals?
My sincere appeal to all of you reading this, please minimize the torture. Not only on these few days of the festivals but on all days! Make a small contribution however small it might be. Small reductions when multiplied among large number of people will make a difference. Please celebrate Deepawali in its true spirit! Please let it not become a materialistic indulgence that has a negative of the original spirit!