Nov
10
Written by:
David Strickland
11/10/2007 7:48 PM
Diwali. Is the india festival of Lights. I'm told it takes about the same spot in the India mind as Christmas does in America. It's the festival time. A time to spend with family. There are actually three times of year that you could consider the Holidays in India. It really depends on your religious heritage. Hindu's have Diwali. Christian celebrate Christmas. Muslims celebrate Ramadan.
OK though it is the Holiday season I'd have to say the resemblence to christmas stops there. Christmas to me is quiet and calm. Family and friends and carols and cold winter nights. Diwali is loud and Hot. with Christmas are the scents of pine and apple cider. With Diwali is sulfer and ashe. Diwali is the fireworks time of the year and to be perfectly honest the forth of JUly ain't got nothing on this. There is no centralized display. Almost every family in town will buy some fireworks and starting at midnight the night of Diwali and going on for days after they light them off.
My son attempted to tell one of our neighbors that they were supposed to do that on the Forth of July. Fortunately though I don't think they understood. Another one of our neighbors started at midnight of diwali and lit one what would be called a M80 back home every 2 minutes for hours on end. The pile of exploded paper outside his house could of filled seperal garbage bags.
At one point there were at least 20 rockets in the air. The large cannon kind. And they would be all around you. Not just one spot off in the distance but everywhere. We got some of our own for the girls to enjoy along with sparklers and some fountains. The quality though here compared to what I am used to was much different. The rockets would explode without ever taking off. And if they did take off there was no telling were they would go. I finally started reinforcing each rocket with tape to make sure the rocket and the stick stayed together.
In the end it started out to be a good night. However at 2 a.m. 24 hours later when it was still going on it started to get old and the next night at 2 a.m. I began to wonder if my neighbor would ever run out of M80's