Happy Diwali

Last Morning, my phone rang and I picked up saying a low tone “hello”. A voice replied “hello, Happy diwali” and I too responded with a genuinely not interested tone “Thanks, happy diwali to you too”. It was my friend and I hung up the call saying would call later. I checked the time, phone showed 09:00 am and I reluctantly got up thinking that yes, today was diwali, the day of enjoying, eating lots of sweets, cleaning, bursting crackers and we (I stay with roomies), should be soon engaged ourselves in cleaning process of our house. We friends started cleaning, somebody was at the kitchen and the other was at the rooms, one cleaning his bathroom, and the other cleaning the utensils. It took almost 1- 1.5 hr to complete the whole activity. And the waste that we all collected now needed to be dumped. Sid, one of my roomie, said “Arey just keep it outside the house, the garbage collector would come and collect it” not giving a damn that the same floor was being shared by 2 more flats. Our apartment builder has built a dump zone for all the garbage at each floor and I was of the view that we could dump the garbage collected there itself. Thanks, don’t know to whom, he didn’t do that and put it in the dump zone. I said to myself “happy diwali”.
It is one day when most of the people want to make Laxmi, the goddess of money, happy and the bachelors don’t remain behind in doing that fully fledged. Yes, again we all started decorating Pooja sthan with diyas and Chinese manufactured lights. Suddenly my phone rang again, and this time it was my father, said “happy diwali son” and I replied, this time cherishingly, “happy diwali” and he told me to make a note of not eating sweets made up of Mewa. Sad, one of my so called definitions of diwali (eating sweets) was ruined and the reason given that the pure Mewa was not being used in the sweets. I said “ok” and a short thanks (reluctantly) for not letting me eat impure sweet.
An evening came and I went out to meet some of my friends. Outside the apartment, a group of 10-15 people, young people were trying to enjoy Diwali. They were standing there just outside the apartment gate, shouting, not letting the vehicles easy way in or out both, passing vulgar remarks garishly ( in quest for enjoying) among themselves only. They didn’t care for any other person in the name of enjoyment of the festival. I saw them and again my other definition gone in vain.
As I entered my friend’s house, lots of friends were already there as I was the last one to come (as usual but I always try to manage) and we all greeted each other. After some talks we decided to go down to burst crackers. Although I have stopped bursting crackers since a long time, I went down with them (else I had to sit aloneL). They started bursting them, everybody was enjoying, some were startled by its lights, and some were putting fingers in their ears to resist the sound of crackers and some like me watching everybody. I also joined them in lighting fooljhadi and firkiri. But then, I was looking at the noise, the fog of pollution created by the crackers, and the wastage of money and thinking that is it a real diwali. And then, thereafter accruing to my thoughts of mind, garbage created over was left there only, and nobody took, even the empty boxes, to the dump zone. Is it really a Diwali we were celebrating, by polluting both the environment and the eatables, by wasting money, by shouting vulgarly?
But then if everybody was busy doing all this, they all could not be wrong!! We went inside the house and then I kept all thoughts in some lonely part of my brain when we had homemade food and my mind said to me “All’s well that ends well”.

Recently you must have heard a lot about one word i.e. Austerity. Everybody using it, some in the airplanes, others in rails and yet others, in cars, too. But do we really get the real meaning. Are we really following on the meaning of it? I have my own meaning too, may be right or wrong.
The dictionary defines it as severity of manner life, sternness, ascetic practices. But how!!
The answer lies in the consciousness. Consciousness towards the society, creating awareness towards the requirements of the society, which is needed from its people Yes, we people. It’s all about having the courage to get things changed that is required, “the big need of an hour”.
There are areas of concern which requires our immediate attention like clean water, energy preservation, education, pollution, equality in terms of gender, recycling of waste etc.
We know that there is scarcity of resources, knowledge, and foresight. No such circumstances can be found for the present epoch. Things should be done constructively and not destructively. One should always try to move in the forward direction.
What is going wrong is stumbling upon the same stone time and again. No, that’s not a correct manner if one wants to remain in the race of development. How come after getting more than 50 years of independence we are still in the league of developing nations. All above mentioned are the hindrances for the same. I don’t say that none of us is doing anything. People are trying to make a big difference by working as a part of various NGO’s, which are teaching children, giving them books, money, shelter etc. These organizations are also motivating people to do right things and making them aware of activities through different kinds of advertisements. These are some of the things many organizations are working on, but still if we look at the root level, then we can find that many things seems to be going haphazardly and not producing the right result because of the red tapism in politics and bad management, people are not getting the resources allocated for them.
So now it’s a need of an hour that we austere ourselves, in the way of taking up responsibilities toward our society. Also we should look forward taking up of initiatives for making our country, our nation, a better place to live. We all know, what is good and what is bad for our society, but the only thing which is missing is the awareness amongst the citizens and remember this truly said quote "God gave me nothing I wanted; he gave me everything I needed".