As soon as
one hears the word Diwali his face glows up with happiness and expectations of
some gifts coming his way. As the festival is called the festival of lights,
the first thing one tends to imagine about Diwali is glowing lights all over
the places whether it’s a home or a shop. Many houses and shops are studded with
decorations worth of thousands of rupees. As the dusk calls upon, people of all
ages come out to burn crackers, to hog sweets and to see other people relishing
joy and happiness. People get ready for the new year and conduct poojas to
satisfy their gods to bring them prosperity and happiness. Walking down any
given street on a Diwali, would screen these images in front of you.
On a second
thought, is Diwali really a festival of lights for everyone and for every
family? Well, one might know the answer which is, it is not. On one hand, where
you see houses studded with lights, filled with children’s howling and
screaming and crackers bursting to the highest of the noises, on another hand
one would find some houses dark and sad as if they have been discriminated from
the festivities. These are the houses where the glowing of a single bulb so
that the family gets some light in the night is far more important than a
cluster of decorative lights running through the whole house. The residents of
such houses only pray to God so that the darkness does not cloud upon their
house. The families in these houses wait for their bread winners to bring some
money in by night so that they could feed their bellies. These are not the
houses who through their exemplary and expensive decorations try to flaunt
their wealth on the festival of lights.
According
to Hindu mythology, it is a day for Lakshmi Pooja where in the members of the
house worship the goddess Lakshmi so that she brings wealth and prosperity to
the family in the coming new year. People in their quest to satisfy the goddess
offer numerous eatables and decorative materials worth a lot of money.
Somewhere in this world, lie those families who can't even afford their god and
goddess’ idols to be kept at home- forget about carrying out the rituals. They
don’t even have anything to offer to their own appetites so what
would they offer to the goddess. Instead of praying for the coming year, they
pray that God gives them the strength to somehow survive the remaining year.
Should not the goddess bless their family with wealth and prosperity? What
matters the most- the grandeur of the worship or the real faith in the worship?
While
gazing at the children bursting crackers and eating sweets given by their
parents, you almost sense their happiness. But there lies a section of children
who don’t have either a single sweet to eat or a single cracker to burst. Are
these children happy? They go to various houses and shops to ask for something
to eat and share with their friends. Is this a festival for them? They might
not even know about the festival but they only strive for and ask from their
parents the same happiness that other children feel on this same day.
Coming to
the so-called normal sections of the society, even for them the festival often
turns out to be a nightmare more than a sweet dream. People come out of their
houses to burst crackers which they have bought from the market worth of
thousands of rupees. They love to hear the noise of the bursting crackers as they
feel that they have justified their act of spending a lot of money on something
that vanishes off as soon as its been put to test by a flame of fire. For
people who burst the crackers, the noise is selfishly very pleasing but same is
not the case with others such as the elderly people and the people who don’t
support the noise. Does the grand festival give you an excuse to trouble
other’s privacy or health?
There is a
famous saying related to the flame of a candle that beneath the flame always
lies darkness. The darkness right below the candle flame shows a deep contrast
between the good and the bad. Probably, the above phenomena are a part of the
darkness beneath the candle of the grandeur festival of light. The attempts to
make the flame bigger and brighter, increases the darkness and hence, the
contrast even more. The real act of humanity would be not to increase the flame
but to decrease the darkness beneath it. There’s nothing wrong with
celebrating the festival but what one needs to know is that spreading lights in
others’ lives in the end increases the lights of his own happiness.
This idea
might seem a bit vague and ambitious but it’s a fact that it is possible. If
one succeeds to even bring light to one life, this would add to the brightness
of his celebration of the festival of light and the coming New Year.
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