Diwali was the most eagerly awaited festival for children and it was common to hear fire crackers go off several days before and after the festival. Over the years, owing to prices, pollution and pets, the festival is being celebrated on a lower key in Bangalore. Though one doesn’t hear fire crackers days ahead of Diwali to signal the approaching festival these days, the retail revolution has ensured that one knows the festival is round the corner with the papers, pamphlets and super markets announcing sales.The advent of the festival was also evident from the open display of fire crackers in shops. Before the ban on selling crackers in shops came into force, one went to the family’s provision store to buy the season’s supply of fire crackers. The shopkeeper’s tins of Ovaltine and Tinopal would make way for packets of aane (elephant) patakis (big red fire crackers) and kudre (horse) patakis (smaller crackers), besides rockets, flower pots and the like. Besides provision stores, people bought their quota of crackers from their work places.Employees of Bangalore’s public sector industries, which were once the biggest employers in the city, brought home cartons of crackers from their factories, which sold it to their employees at a discount. It was also common for people to buy crackers through chit fund schemes.Once the crackers are brought home, some of them are unpacked and left out in the sun, presumably to keep the powder dry. However, it is common to see crackers failing to go off after they are lit. But when the little boy gets close to it to check the fuse, “bang” it goes, sending him scurrying for cover, leaving the incense stick behind. Children also innovate with crackers, like covering a bomb with a tin, only to see it shoot up into the sky once the cracker goes off. On Diwali day, lamps line up on compound walls, the flower pots light up the streets, the bombs echo off the walls, the rockets hiss and blast in the city’s several neighbourhoods. There’s not a minute’s silence. A view of the night sky shows rockets in every direction shooting up into the darkness and ending with a blast, which is only heard a fraction of a second later.After an evening of lighting the firecrackers, the little boy goes indoors and finds circles in front of his eyes and ringing in his ears owing to the incessant bursting of crackers. It’s one festival that the poor pet dreads. After repeated barking and whimpering fails to stop the barrage of crackers, the cur retreats to the bedroom and takes cover under the grandpa’s cot.
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