Celebration

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 16; the sixteenth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

One more Diwali this year.

I think, the craze diminishes with age, especially if you don’t have children to enjoy with, it is not like those Diwali days of yester years when we were kids.

This year it wore a subdued mood.

Best Diwali was celebrated during those days when mom was alive. It had a different meaning then. Mom would start cleaning the house fifteen days before the D-day, which would be followed by shopping for new clothes, then making sweets, distributing to family and friends and finally the prayers, with plenty of gifts exchanged, some of them recycled. There would be lots of crackers and fireworks, mud lamps were placed at every window sill in the house and balconies would be lit with colorful bulbs. We would have continuous stream of guests, and of course lots of phone calls from relatives who lived abroad.

But, after mom, nothing is same.

With 90% of my older relatives dead and gone, the few that are left, they live in their own world.

Cleaning is done by maids, sweets and savories purchased from the stores and shopping is just a norm. We are shopping all year round so this is just another day.

I walk downstairs to meet the kids in my building compound and they are bursting expensive rockets. ‘How much did you pay for this 30 seconds pleasure?” I ask their father as I see the rocket go up in the sky and burst into thousand spraklers "Don’t even mention, it burns our heart and our pocket” they say “We have paid through our nose” and their kids looked at them with crinkled nose trying to understand what we meant and I tell them “Beta, you don’t understand how difficult the times are now, wait for 20 years and you will understand”

The children continue to derive the pleasure of bursting more crackers, those bigger strings of 2000 noisy crackers and I pause for a longer time to complete my unfinished sentence.

I am proud of the blinking red-rose shaped bulbs, which runs parallel to string of colored bigger bulbs and then there is one more string of hundred tiny green bulbs running across my balcony grill in the zigzag fashion. I am elated each time I go to my balcony to admire them, and then suddenly...Oh No! It is raining heavily, wetting my extension cord. It never used to rain during Diwali . Global warming! Bah! It is darkness again.

I recieve many SMS's, people sending me the forwards with no originality or personal touch. I do the same. All my friends are on social media and they all wish me on Face-book. No postman arrives with a greeting card. (when they come for Diwali bakshis they have an embarrassed look) All of my NRI family is on a smart phone and they exchange virtual sweets, jokes and greetings, but nobody calls to wish…no warm voice I hear. Every body’ messages I read on line and smile…alone.

I am glad that I do have family and friends towards whom I can stretch and reach physically.

I eat, pray and love during Diwali for sometime with them, offline

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.