Are we done? No, one or two more days to go before I can roam around freely, talk and listen to people clearly and stop feeling victimized. Two more days to go before I can stop getting depressed thinking of the children who have toiled at Sivakasi, a lot of whom might not be healthy enough to celebrate Diwali. Two more days to go before the animals and birds can start feeling safer. Our immune systems are already busy, bitching about us for being such fools.
To me, Diwali is all about reaffirming myself that burning crackers is not the right thing to do. You don't have to be an atheist to dislike it. You just need common sense and more importantly, you need to be non-reluctant to use that sense. As I write this, I appear to myself as a loser. My voice against this cannot be even heard in the midst of noise around.
I keep debating with people on why you should stop feeling frustrated about what is going on in our country because for most of the mess, we are the ones responsible. I've noticed that they usually they get pissed off with the corruption, politics and inflation. I completely understand their frustration. We pay taxes, yet the country isn't "growing", all because the taxes aren't being used properly, because they go into the wrong hands. We are extremely judgmental about politicians. We are the best judges. On the other side, though it isn't necessary to read a research paper to understand that burning crackers isn't good in any possible way, we still do it! There are a lot of these things that are so simple to follow for the sake of ourselves, yet we don't. Tomorrow morning, when I see "intellectuals" talking about how much the traffic was when they were driving to Hosur to buy crackers, how much discount they could get, boast about how their kids aren't scared about bombs and when the conversation gets boring, shift to their most favorite topic and say "This foreigner is ruining our country man", I feel more hopeless.
I spent some 300 rupees to watch "Jab tak hai jaan" today. When I was just debating on whether I have to be choosy about movies and resist the temptation to watch my favorite actors on screen no matter what the movie is about, I saved my verdict for some other day and felt proud and relieved that I didn't burn my money on crackers.
