DIWALI 2012

HAPPY DIWALI 2012, ONE DAY LATE!

The sprightly urchin was barely more than one metre tall but he enjoyed tirelessly pushing the cart harder and faster. His six little brothers and sisters could not have had a jollier time jumping, wobbling and wrestling amongst themselves with carefree abandon while riding on it! Those playful kids thus formed a happy sight out of the window of my car, notwithstanding the after-thought that a count of seven only contributed to population boom!

            It was the last time on the vacation that I was making the two hour journey from my town to Guwahati to board the plane to Delhi and so I savoured every view unlike my previous lamentations!

            Two hours at the airport were spent without talk or food or drink but only gazing at the outside, at pretty air hostesses in colourful sarees, plentiful cute little kids gamboling hither and thither and mute televisions!

            There were very few people inside the plane and the loudest presence was a wailing kid who cried the whole time because his visibly embarrassed young parents did not know how to make him shut up! The air hostesses dedicated much of their time to the cute little half-pint to cause only a trifle jealous annoyance to a fat man with dazzling clothes and jewellery, whose bald head was an exhibition of ample testosterone levels!

            A taxi ride later and in total, after ten hours, I was back into my room with none of my room-mates being home! I frantically dialed the numbers of near-by restaurants to order dinner but to no avail. Thus, I had to exercise my own cooking talents and raced against time to make it to my hospital for night duty. The solitary auto-rickshaw driver initially declined to hazard out amidst the war-like onslaught of crackers but later on gave in to one dialogue, “I am a doctor and I must reach my hospital!”

            It was Diwali and I had overlooked that the whole day, right from the arrays of banana trunks alongside the road I travelled, the attire of the gorgeous ladies in the airport, the greetings of the crew of the plane and the several empty seats, the much more than normal illuminated view of the Earth from above, the deafening sound of the crackers while I was on the taxi ride, the closed restaurants and the hazardous auto ride to my hospital until I attended to many dozen patients who streamed in with burns to various parts of their body who were even then upbeat in celebration mode!

            Today, as I relax in my room in a post-night off, the whole thing is sinking in at last! The crackers are still bursting and the lights are shining bright!