again no gharwaliDiwali

In our childhood diwali was very exciting and now it became some sort of tradition in which you repeat yourself doing same stuff again and again.

Lightning, decoration and crackers are replaced by exchange of diwali sweets(gitfs in case you want to make somebody extra happy - read bribing) .

When we were child I can easily remember in my hometown there was only exchanges of sweets not gifts. And these sweets were only part of the pooja offered to Goddess Laxmi by the commercial shops or home. There was no involvement of Haldiram or Bikano there.

Sasaram being a commercial hub of my district there were/are many shops from where we were excited to get sweets to my home as my father is very well known person due to our own school.

So my diwali or our family diwali always include offering pooja at two places home as well as school.

We are family of 4, mom dad and my younger brother. So we both brothers got two places to crack our crackers until we get know what exactly we were cracking. When I was 12 then I got to know these fireworks are very environment unfriendly so we both bros decided to celebrate it without crackers. Till date we are maintaining the same. There were two immediate advantage of stopping the use of firecracker, firstly environment is preserved and secondly we got to know the our traditional way of celebrating diwali with parents. Since then we both brothers celebrate it by making our house clean, lighting up candles and decorating and cleaning house with light bulbs.

We used to live in Kaccha house before we moved to concrete one . Diwali meant cleaning as well as painting our house with Calcium carbonate (choona) . Now a concrete house only needs cleaning as today's paints are very stubborn to fade.

Things get change once you move out from home. Now I used for go home every third or fourth year due to various conditions (read job). Being from Bihar we got two big festivals side by side one is Diwali and six days later Chhath. For us diwali is a public celebration and Chhath is family celebration. In the job it became pretty difficult to get the leaves for such long period, so most of the time Diwali is sacrificed for the Chhath. I would say I have got very sensible parents to understand my condition to let me complete my duties instead taking diwali leaves but somewhere deep down in their heart they want to celebrate diwali with us.

In today's fast pace life everything should be profitable that's why get only one day official leave for holi or diwali. My journey to hometown takes 15-18 hours to reach home. If you haven't planned your diwali leaves in advance forget to get the leaves on immediate basis.

Being from bihar and UP leads to another problem ie getting your tickets reserved during the season

. Tickets for diwali get booked within few hours of opening whether it's 2 month early or 3 months early for a train. Belonging to a small town like sasaram and living in a metro like delhi leaves only train as mode of transport, you get no planes, buses, autos. Once there I'd a waiting list in train you just keep your fingers crossed to get it at least RAC. Travelling time and suffering in booking ticket made me celebrate no ghar waali diwali.

Just missing again gharwaliDiwali .
Written for https://www.gharwalidiwali.com by heart.