A Series of Hatred [Diwali (Day 4)]

What does the season of Diwali come with? A lot of love, enthusiasm, and bond? Or maybe a lot of material stuff like the sweets made with love and gift wrapped with affection.                       

It's been years of hating Diwali for me. Being an Indian and hating Diwali actually is a strange thing but the story behind it isn't illogical either.

I was in grade four when this festival turned out to be the phase I would hate the most- the fear of losing everything again, the fear of going into the daunting nostalgia, the fear of being afraid. 

"Anaya! Dear come let us light the diyas before we leave for grandma's." My mother exclaimed with enthusiasm. I ran towards her with joy like a young deer who is yet to explore the world under its curiosity would.

I looked down at my mother who sat down with the beautiful diyas filled with colors of merriment. We decorated our doorstep with wonderful Rangoli and lighted the diyas and candles inside the house in front of a photograph of Sarasvati before we left. "Mumma, why do we light diyas in Diwali?" i asked my mother as she smiled at my innocence and replied, "We light diyas to conquer over darkness." With the feeling of doing something really great after lighting the diyas, we all left to meet our elders and spread love.

I let out a sigh of satisfaction as we left from our grandma's to return home and rest. A feeling of togetherness was what I received and it seemed so special that the smile on my face couldn't have vanished for days. Everything seemed right into place that was until we reached home.

It was two O'clock in the morning and my eyes seemed to be too blurry for me to witness anything that existed a few blocks away from me. As soon as we reached the entrance of our building, a blurred white smoke gathered around my eyes making me feel nauseous. The vehicles were parked and my parents ran towards the door of our house where my uncle and paternal grandfather stood with empty, wet buckets. I couldn't stop coughing for the smoke made me sick. As I came near towards my house, everything got scarier and eventually darker. I could see flames of fire being washed away by the water they brought in the buckets and everything was as black as coal in no time. After probably half an hour I realized what had happened in there- The diyas that we left burning converted from a little spark of the small flame to a disastrous fire that burnt the happiness within. My smile turned into a suspicious fear, my dad seemed a lot more than worried. There was silence everywhere and all I could hear was the melancholy that played in my heart. Suddenly there was a loud thud that hit like a metal rod in my ears- the television in our hall had burst. If only if was a couple seconds earlier, it would have injured my uncle who had come out after splashing water on the little flames of fire near it. 

Few days later, I fell ill, I stopped eating and barely smiled. I never talked about it with my parents or any of my friends but it came into my nightmares every day - the burning fire coming out of my home, the loud thud, the blackened tables and burning desires. I burnt my coin collection and all the drawings that I had made with all my emotions.

Of course, there wasn't much damage as it did not blast off the packed gas and few flammable oils inside the kitchen, but it really did shake out the budget of our house. Being in a middle class family and then facing such a disaster can really give a lot of damage to wealth, especially after I fell ill.

"Thank God we weren't present at home during the fire." My mother said. But if we look deeper into it, none of this would have happened if we had stayed at home and been there mindfully.

It took a lot of time for me and the home to recover and until that, it was already the next Diwali. 

"He is no more." said my best friend as he sat there sniffing in the sadness. His dog died after he got a heart attack from the sudden burst of crackers of Diwali. I had stopped burning crackers the past year after everything happened but it made me so distressed about the fact that this festival had just become a festival of misery and despair, for the idea of burning crackers was nowhere to be mentioned in any of the religious books that the people of our country follow.

A couple of years later, when we were finally happy and enjoying this festival, we saw a nostalgic and dreadful fire in one of the buildings near ours. But this time, it was so big that the heat could be felt from meters away. The flames came out of the windows of the flat and there it was- a loud thud. My anxiety gave in, I couldn't stop my tears, I felt helpless. The fire, the crowd outside the building, their fear of confirming if anyone was present inside the house and the dreadful vibes that surrounded the place seemed to have gotten over me. As soon as we reached home, I blew out all the diyas kept outside the house. It might have felt very crazy to some but this became more sensitive every year.

And then, today, that would be the consecutive Diwali- my uncle fell ill. My relative's house caught a small fire. It seemed like, every year this day was cursed for me. Somehow, everything had to go wrong and somewhere, there was a gut feeling that something will go wrong anyhow every year. It started with the curiosity to know why diyas were lighted to being scared to death of letting them burn my happiness, from wanting to visit my loved ones to being homesick in fear of letting something wrong happen to me, from a blooming garden of joy to wilted land of hate and sorrow.

I was no longer interested in conquering darkness, I wanted to be in the darkness instead.

 Even now if someone asks me about what I gained or learnt from this traditional and wonderful Indian festival, my answer would never be 'a lot of love from elders' or 'The happiness of conquering over the darkness' or 'the time spent well with my loved ones. 

It would always be a sentence filled with grief, torture, and dreadful ending as my answer-

"A series of hatred"