The festival is here! Diwali, the festival of Lights, the festival of wealth, prowess and what-not has come down knocking here in India once again. The norm of many over here is to ‘purchase’ – spend lavish amounts on all types of acts like buying jewellery, burning lakhs on crackers, sarees, dining in the most costly restaurants of the city – and the list goes on, and it’s meaningless to extend it anymore. Roaming on the streets of Park Street here in Kolkata, any one is sure to be impressed by the gaze of the sky-height buildings ornamented with the tiny gleaming bulbs so common here on Indian Diwali-occasions, and I wonder – Ah! India is becoming so economically sound – so rich! And everyone knows the reality is far from such sweet imaginations.
I HATE DIWALI!
Not because of all it’s grand dazzling display of the array of decorations in the corporate buildings to the flats, but because I hate the loud sound of crackers – the loud ones, which, as claimed by the Police, is banned, yet they are so common in all the big markets of the cities, and as I write this blog-post some idiot in the neighborhood is ‘enjoying’ the cracking loud booms of the bombs . So-called peace loving people turn to such loud roaring sparkles of displaying crackers make it a mess.
Speaking of spending money, have a look at this.
Poverty – Family Bondage seem so futile in front of it. Of what magnitude an evil it is! India is poor, let’s not hide from us this truth. The newspapers or media often turn up with dizzying heights of imaginations – stories that dish out false hopes in our minds among harsh truths. India needs at least another couple of centuries to become a leader of the developed world. Let us not hide the ugly fact of poverty behind the glass-doors of the businessmen of this country. And spending crores of money on the ‘holy’ occasion of Dhanteras does no good to the already declining social status of us, be it mentioned here that social status is not measured by the car we ride, or the dress we wear at marriage parties.
I am growing a bit sick of this society.
Long back, Swami Vivekananda expressed – “It’s not the clothes we wear that makes a gentleman – it’s character that makes one..” Would he be cheered if he came back now in 2012?
They said bombs were banned as crackers!
And I had to sit with my hands against my ears yesterday.