Imagine some 14 feet tall alien creatures living with us on the same planet celebrating a festival by throwing sharp knives and forks while normal humans walk around. Or by throwing bombs that exceed our noise-bearing capacity and mixing chemicals in our public water sources. Life threatening? This is how we celebrate. We are those tall cruel aliens to other living beings of Mother Nature.
“Bharat tyoharo ka desh hai”(India is a land of festivals). We all have used this line back in childhood days. Many things have changed since then but one thing stays as it is: Negligence: of reasons, of results.
Of Reasons:
Our holy books tell us the stories that reason the celebration. Home coming of Lord Rama for Deepawali, Bhakt Prahalaad‘s life saved for Holi, End of Raavana’s Life for Dussehra, and so on. There is always a reason to believe “why we” celebrate. But there is always a choice “how” to celebrate. Unfortunately almost all the ‘how to celebrate’ have been so badly chosen without any substantial reason that every celebration is followed by a disaster. And nobody is talking about logic here. We are discussing ‘legitimacy.’
Recall. The people of Ayodhya welcomed Lord Rama by endless series of lit lamps. Did they light firecrackers? The concept of colors was good as far as natural colors- turmeric, kum–kum, sandalwood etc are used. Healthy for your skin and follows the social equality rationale. But what we use are artificial and synthetic colors. Answering who started it and why won’t help. The big question is, if someone celebrated in his own way, why did we support, follow and still practice it? Why?
Of Results:
No need to mention any. Pick a newspaper after the celebration night. It’ll give you the details of dead, injured, burnt, cut and allergic patients and places that caught fire. But we still celebrate in our irrational way. Be it any kind; air, water, soil, noise; we are so used to pollution that we hardly take it as a problem. Birds lose wings, pets lose temper, street animals stop drinking water, but we don’t lose our celebration. We have to carry it on.
Again, WHY? Just because everybody else does the same way and they will laugh on you for choosing a different path? Or maybe because this is what we’ve seen from the beginning. A one year-old child cries and brawls just like a bird in response to loud firecrackers. That’s his natural response. But the same child enjoys watching it by the age of 4, trying it at 5 and doing it courageously at 6. Because ‘firecrackers’ means ‘fun’. This is what he has learnt. If we don’t stop, neither will our next generation.
No one is suggesting to feed the poor. Do that if that makes you happy. Spend on family. But this time don’t buy weapons. Population, terrorism; too big to handle. Start with a small one.
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