Celebrating the "Indian Halloween"

Actually Diwali is more like Halloween and Christmas come together. I'd forgotten how much fun it gets to be. Starts with all the new clothes everyone wears. Our office was open so people showed up for work, including me. I had my new khadi kurta on, very stylish, if I may say so myself. Couldn't wait to go home and when my cousin rang me to let me know he was in the neighbourhood, I shot out of the office. After hitting up a few touristy places before sunset, we went home and I changed into something more diwali-comfortable. And the fun started.

I had a few sweets I'd bought which I shared with him. He brought a few firecrackers he shared with me. We lit up the non-explosive stuff on the rooftop and went out into the street for the exploding stuff. It's amazing how much I'd forgotten about the Diwali fireworks. Like for example taking a bit off the fuse for bombs before lighting them up because you don't want the bomb going off too soon after you're lit it. And there's the wide variety of things you can buy. The magnesium pencils, the "vishnu chakras", the "wires", the color matches etc. Looking from the outside, it's amusing to note the names of the various bombs that come into play. Like the Lakshmi bomb (wrapped in tons of paper with a picture of Lakshmi on the outside), the Hydrogen Bomb (green), the chain bombs of course.

We didn't have rockets to fire off but after watching something near my apt, I'm glad I didn't. There was this apt complex that is under construction. As we were looking around I saw a rocket take off and go right into the unfinished balcony of that building. Now it's pretty safe since no one was in it (I think) and it's all just concrete anyway. But made me realize that if something I set off went into someone's house, I'd kick myself.

I'd have liked to have eaten before getting my hands dirty with the fireworks but my cousin was eager to kick off the fireworks so we went out eating after the fireworks. It's crazy to drive during Diwali since at every few feet someone is setting off some explosion or the other. Most of these can't harm you, but you do get startled and that can be bad if you're driving.

Pune was quite disciplined in that the fireworks ended at a very decent hour. By the time we'd finished dinner at around 9:30pm, the streets had emptied and the last few fireworks died out in another hour at most. Except for some jackass who exploded a few in my building at midnight and woke me up - I hope he suffered some permanent damage from the explosion.

Happy Diwali everyone!