I wish you a happy & phosphorous Diwali...

People celebrate Deepavali to remember the day Lord Rama and his company returned to Ayodhya after a 14-year exile. Rama honoured his father's words and went into exile. Today, people want to celebrate his greatness by burning crackers and spreading smoke not caring about many elderly fathers who suffer from breathing problems.

Do you know? The King of Gods - 'Indra' (often seen as being pervert, insecure or sadistic) provoked Goddess Lakshmi to go back from this world into the Milky Ocean. Without Lakshmi's guidance, the world started turning darker (people on the Earth started becoming poor). They churned the Milky Ocean for 1000 years and the goddess reincarnated here. We celebrate her return by being ostentatious and spending a hefty amount of money on crackers. What a way to teach our children that respecting Lakshmi means burning crackers without teaching them true happiness is being joyful without being senseless.

Narakasura got a boon from Brahma that he could be killed only by his mother. It was assumed that no mother would ever kill her son. Gods are known for correcting their mistakes instead of not making mistakes. His mother was born as Satyabhama and she, with her husband's help killed Narakasura. Just before he died, Narakasura requested the divine couple that his death should not be mourned but celebrated with happiness. Hence, we celebrate Deepavali (Naraka Chaturdashi). Today, we celebrate his death by burning crackers that can bring death to the weak-hearted and the old people. What an irony!

Another story. King Bali kept expanding his kingdom from Earth to the heavens. Gods, as usual, pleaded Lord Vishnu to stop Bali's progress. Vishnu, disguised as a dwarf (Vamana) asked for 3 steps of land and innocent Bali granted it. Vamana covered the entire universe in two steps and conquered Bali in his third step. To compensate for this deceptive move, Vishnu granted Bali the boon of visiting Earth one day every year and we celebrate it as Bali Padyami. We burn crackers. What a way to welcome such a great king by polluting the air! We should welcome him by remembering his greatness and spreading his administrative skills among people instead of burning crackers and making Bali asthmatic if he visits Earth, shouldn't we?

Goddess Kali killed demons, Pandavas returned to their kingdom after a 12-year exile, Mahavira got enlightened and reached Nirvana and Guru Hargobind was freed from imprisonment on the same days of Diwali.

We celebrate all these by burning crackers. If you find happiness in spreading smoke and troubling the sensitive lungs of a mother or a father in your home or your neighbourhood, if you feel it's joyful to explode a cracker and make a bang choking the hearts of the grandparents who are counting down their days of their life or a fetus in a sister's womb who is counting down days to come to the world, if you call it a celebration that troubling the innocent animals on the roads, if you find beauty in the stained and littered roads with the debris of crackers, I pity your understanding of happiness.

I wish you a happy & phosphorous Diwali.