Festival time

It’s that time of the year again! Deepavali (or Diwali), the festival of lights is here to bring joy and prosperity. The festival marks the celebration of good over evil. Of Lord Rama’s homecoming, victorious after slaying Ravana, the evil king of Lanka. And some other legends. For me, any festival means a time to be with family and friends. Time to gorge on some yummy specially made food and sweets for the occasion. But the special attraction of Diwali is the lighting of diyas (lamps). The evening turns into a celebration of light. Of hope and happiness that darkness will never be able to destroy the light for long.

Ah yes, you think I forgot about the firecrackers. Well, I choose to forget actually. I don’t really want to confront the fact, that nowadays Diwali is more of a noise festival than a festival of lights. Awful sounding crackers everywhere, the paper left by them strewn in all directions on all roads (And I’m not kidding when I say ALL). The terrible air pollution from the fumes of the crackers and the ear shattering noise pollution from the sound. Apart from the environmental -, there are the accidents that happen. A cracker bursting in the face. Burn incidents. Horror stories of child labour in fireworks factories. All this mar the significance of a celebration.

Let’s try and minimize the hazards. Let’s celebrate the true spirit of the occasion. Happy Diwali. Have a safe one. Have a good one. Eat lots

A daunting task

Have you  noticed how tough it is to study after a long gap? To study when you work? To study because you need to pass something you really don’t believe in. It’s altogether another topic as to why I’m doing this if I don’t want to. But for some questions, there are no direct answers. Atleast not right now.

Attention span for some reason refuses to go beyond 10 mins at a stretch. Everything but concentrating on the book comes to your mind.

1. You suddenly remember the exact timings of your favourite TV show and realise you can maybe catch an episode of it in some time (all these days of course being blissfully unaware of it). 

2. Hunger pangs hit you more often. You especially think of restaurants you’ve never been to. This in particular never strikes when you’re in the car, starved, and you want to go to a new place. How much ever you think of it, the name of the place never comes to mind and you end up going to the same old tried-and-tested-and-found-satisfactory-restaurant.

The dream win

So, finally we have a World Cup (after 1983). Yohoooooooo :grin: I do like Twenty20 , much against my initial apprehension about it. It’s entertaining no doubt. It’s almost as if cricket’s reborn. It definitely has a huge fan following already (like anything about cricket in India needed an incentive!). The dream final: India vs arch rivals Pakistan. I think India won purely due to luck in the final ‘coz both teams were terrific. Pakistan was one shot away from the elusive win against India (they’ve never won against us in a World Cup match), one bad shot from Misbah and he handed us the victory. That’s what counts, you say. Victory, we won. That’s what matters. Who cares how it came about? Of course we played some great games to reach the final (including the final). Let me not take anything away from the team. We did deserve to win, surely.

  With a super bunch of youngsters in the team, all fired up, and hopefully this is just what they need to keep the momentum going. Except that it might not remain that way too long due to the crazy hype being created by the Board of Cricket and the Indian media.