When we were young crackers were a luxury & was rationed like many things those days, like cement, bajaj chetak's etc. My fathers youngest brother Gopanna used to do the collection from my dad & eldest brother Gundanna aka Doddappa to buy crackers.
He was an over organised man for his age. He used to buy exact number of crackers to the last bijilee & sparkler. We were 14 kids in the joint family representing excietement equal to 10 timess what my daughters have now. It was division of cracker time on the eve of Balipadyami, the first day of deepavali. We boys got all the dhaam dhoom crackers & the girls got the sparklers, flowerpots etc.
We had to split crackers later on for Bali Padyami, Narakachaturdashi & a small little lot for tulasi puja which falls after a month after Deepavali. I was always the first one to run out of crackers & then eye on the crackers of other cousin brothers, sometimes stealing them too.
On the first day me & favorite cousin of our family Sundaresha aka Sundi would get up at 5 am (we never got up that early for any other festival) & burst the loudest of the lot, hydrogen bomb or lakshmi pataki in the 50ft long ally leading to our house in Gandhibazar. Our sole intention was to wake the neighbourhood & announce the arrival of Deepavali.
As our cracker ration increased our mornings too streched. Boys from Govindappa Road joined & some not so brave kids of the road designated me to burst their part of heavy sounding crackers. So lunch soon became a quick affair to continue indulging in innovative ways of cracker bursting. Sometimes under a coconut shell or an empty tin or inside a tree. Most thrilling (which I still relish) was lighting the cracker up & throwing it away at the precise time, so that it bursts in mid air.
As far as I remember I have had 3 major burn injuries which put me off crackers 3 deepavali's & innumerable small injuries which did not hamper the cracker bursting spree.
On the third day after 10pm a new sport took shape in early 90's. We used to split ourselves into two teams & light rockets at each other, lighting them up flat on the road. But within few years of invention of this game there was a bad accident to a dear friend of ours which put us off this cracker spree. Chakrapani almost lost his eye & our senselessness was held responsible by everyone on the road.
Soon I had entered my 20's & cracker bursting had become mere waste of time from a ritualistic celebration of who I was. Soon I realised a ciggarette in my hand was better than an agarbatti & I remember lighting the odd crackers in the road with ciggarettes.
Than came the job days when Deepavali was just another festival where u get a holiday & eat lots of food. This became a routine for the next two decades till Shamaa last year demanded crackers of her choice. Till then we used to just go to Sundi's house for his cracker bursting spree with 10K wala & fancy items (like the image here). We still continue to do that & this year Shamaa showed the vigour which I had in Sundi's house.
So how ever bad the practice of cracker bursting is in many eyes now a days, I strongly feel its a ritual practice attached to our open source Hinduism. Like respecting elders or removing footwear before we enter a temple etc & its here to stay with us for a long time, just the way how Hinduism has survived waves of oppressions from other religions & internal anarchism.
I now am indirectly & happily motivated to continue this practice till Saara & Shamaa decide otherwise.
Comments
Post a Comment
Tell me what you think...