From "Burima" to "Gaza 2023": A History of Diwali

 Diwali is celebrated in the darkness of Kartik Amavasya through the festival of light to luminate our dark feelings, egos, obsessions, insecurities. 

However the same festival turns out to be an extravaganza of smoke, pollution, sound every year. This year the sounds are amplified with sounds of missiles, human cry to a higher frequency catalysed by few wars. The power of these sounds always dominate the voice of help from animals, people suffering from asthma, sound pollution. Is it this power of sound domination due to which fire crackers, agri residues, houses are burnt in New Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, Russia and many more: even though the acts are defined to be criminaĺ by law and norms of Kartik Amabasya.

The field of heuristics in Psychology will say that people cant personalise the distant pains to others from their acts and hence in the society fire crackers, houses, air gets burnt and polluted. Simple answers which can be relatable to me or you will be looked after as an answer to these complex questions of a society. Hence, I will always justify an action through such simple answers and continue to burn. It continues as my action is insignificant when in a society every human being is a criminal of some order, degree as knowingly or unknowingly, we burn something or the other. So my, our act of burning continues. Often it continues because the pleasure, benefits of living on an edge, with a false sense of pleasure power are higher than the costs of consequential impacts of that living on everyone in a society. Hence people continue smoking, drinking, cheating, corruption practices, dropping bombs, invest in high risk assets, engage in extra marritals, serial killers kill, abusers abuse and lovers continue loving.

Today, in 2023, in Diwali, suddenly all these reminded me of Burima Chocolate Bomb, Dodoma, Kalipotka of childhood at Kolkata. The names were all metaphors of my inexplicable escape from reality with a sense of pleasure, power and violence.

 Hence they are metaphors of my memories of childhood pleasure for getting an escape route from the reality of violence, vuĺnerability and power. All this was going fine till 2006, when the scary, anxious eyes of a stray dog at Diwali night made me nude in front of my power, pleasure and vulnerability. 

The darkness of Kartik Amabasya of 2006 therefore made me a jocker in front of the mirror. Since then, firecrackers left me even though it has not left the society. Hence metaphors of burima chocolate bomb memories, sounds and lyrics of war and pollution are still being written in a society - "Where it is normal to be a little bit of Criminal Everyday"!