Are We Really Celebrating???

We people are proud of our heritage… our culture… our zing-y festivals. We just need an excuse to celebrate… and boy we celebrate it with a bang!  That’s our guilty pleasure. Guilty … ‘coz just after all the celebration… there is a flood of news items… articles… blogs… opinions… telling us how wrong/immature/shallow/toxic our way of celebration was. We feel guilty… we promise ourselves to be more concerned next year… but then… these promises follow the trend of our diet resolutions… we can’t stick to it.

Diwali, for example… is supposed to be festival of lights… not sound & smoke. The idea of celebrating Diwali is to dispel the darkness… within us and around us… and not deafen the ears … or blurring the eyes… or suffocating the lungs… or burning the fingers. And it definitely is not about sending the dogs howling & birds scurrying to safety. We have images from NASA of how Diwali celebrations look like from outer space (And man it’s amazing!)… But then… the street view speaks (read screams) otherwise. It makes me wonder if there is any positive connection between the crackers you burst/burn to the satisfaction of Goddess Lakshmi-Goddess of Wealth.  I mean… think about it… one moment you pray to Her to bless you & your family with abundant wealth... and next moment you burn most of it by igniting the Lakhsmi bombs!  Is it an investment scheme where your money (wealth) gets doubled just by setting it on fire? ‘Coz if it’s so… the whole world should try… our economy woes shall shoo away… and that too with a bang!

Our last guilt trip before Diwali was probably during Ganesh Chaturthi… We prayed… we spread joy… we danced… we immersed the not so eco-friendly Lord Ganesh idols (only to be washed away to the shores and polluting the water & beaches). We saw it on TV and newspapers… we felt guilty… we promised ourselves to go green next year (let’s see how that goes). The festivity drugs us so much so that even Lord Ganesha pokes fun at us.... Remember the once upon a time trending SMS where a devotee cries for help during a water disaster and Lord Ganesha dances in glee… the devotee questions Him… to which He replies… “Hey! You started it… you danced like crazy while you drowned me...!”  

Holi if you ask me… has turned into festival of revenge (in a sweet-chilli way though). Nobody remembers or bothers to know the significance of Holi festival. It’s not festival of colours anymore for Holi is not played with just water & colours but anything & everything that can be slathered/ splashed upon your opponent. The “balam pichkari” of Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani is way too clean version of holi is all I can say.

The list of our drugged guilt trips is endless. Now we have a few more added… thanks to globalization & movie-Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Every year at every festival… there is this trend… Activists try creating awareness & request for greener celebrations… We celebrate the way we always have (plus or minus here and there)….  Reports come in post celebration on how green or mean it was… We bow our head down or pretend we did not know about it…

Agreed that we come have a long way… there are a few who have changed the way they celebrate these festivals… they now do it with a greener zing… schools have also now taken the responsibility… We have so called eco-friendly non-toxic colours… less smoky crackers… Lord Ganesha idols… nd blah blah… But then like my friend points out… Are they (we) really celebrating??? Think about it… Do we need all this preaching of toxicity at every festival? Doesn’t that actually dampen the very spirit of celebration? Haven’t our way of celebration become less of a sparkle more of a bang with zilch devotion & spiritualization??   

Peek-a-Boo

On yet another lazy Sunday afternoon as I cruised through cyberspace… it struck me … I forgot the “peek” of peek-a-boo… and kept hiding from blogger world for close to18 months now!! Some hibernation that…!! Without further ado, I checked some of my friends’ blogs… for some recent posts. Barring a few nerdy ones… most of them like me, have been missing from the blogger space.

[*looking at the ceiling with hands up in the air so as to find an answer...]

Not that there weren’t any significant events in life that were worth enough to blog about… or not that events around the world did not inspire me to write one... but then I did not. Probably that’s the case with my other friends too.

In random order with no regards to the significance of each underlying yo-yo event, I have/was in the last 18 months…

ü  Hit highest highs and lowest lows of my personal and professional lives.

ü  Surprised myself following a routine and then … as a routine… gave up the routine.

ü  Written the opening lines for a blog post after being inspired … and then backspaced for I was at loss for words (or just being plain Bruno lazy).

ü  Found loads of faith… lost some on the way and found it back again(now even stronger)

ü  Gained 7…lost 5… gained 3… lost 8… and gained 3 kilos of fat & muscle(*WTF!).

ü  Had 2 increments on my basic (*yay!).

ü  Found a new hobby i.e shopping… (Boy it’s addictive!)

ü  Went on a fabulous trip to South India (Oooh! reminded of God’s own country)  

ü  Worked under 4 different supervisors all in the same company..!

ü  Cleared two most commonly taken banking exams in India-JAIIB & CAIIB in my 1^st attempt.

ü  Sent in two entries for in-house corporate magazine… both of them published… one of which won me a gift card of Rs500.

ü  Enjoyed the warmth of the sun and calmness of the moon.

ü  Taken aback by the harshness of the same sun and iciness of the same moon.

ü  Lost some dear ones and found some new.

Look back… you too might have had some amazing breath taking moments… some blood boiling moments… some blissful moments… some soul shuddering moments… and some still moments… why 18 months? Try 18 days and you’ll have it all.

In the midst of all the mandated chaos (such is the paradox of life)… and search for tranquillity… we all lose our way. Some find it back… some don’t…and they tread a different path altogether. We have demands to meet… we have promises to keep… and then we have a rep to protect… Compromises… sacrifices… escapisms… dousing of passion happens along the way… and then some new found self-philosophy emerges …probably that’s what inspired this post… [*hands up in the air again]

The idea here is… while life and you yo-yo together and play the peek-a-boo… keep doing what brings kicks in euphoria (as opposed to vanilla happiness) and if being too nice becomes pricey.. Don’t be afraid to be a dog/bitch… for they say… every dog has its day… J  

And with that note... here is me signing off ... promising myself to be back at this space frequently enough...