Diwali Musings

3..2..1..and hooray!
Happy Diwali to whomsoever going through this article.
Diwali has always been one of those fondest memories for people like us, rather those under the tag "90s kids".
As I sail across my twenties, I am compelled to reminisced the way this festival used to be celebrated, when juxtaposed with the newly adorned bylaws to celebrate the festival. As subpar as the festival have become, with the regulations that are announced forth like the All India radio advertisements of early modern era and so called promised convenience that this modern era was said to offer.
I remember when the few preceding weeks of Diwali would be the time of the year that used to be steps to the crown of the celebration. The mothers at home would start preparing lots of sweets; Savories that would last at least a month, would slowly start to accompany the lunch 'dabba' of the kids in every household. The days we used to exchange our boxes to taste those sweets as kids, still tickles my taste buds.
The typical Diwali day would start with 'amma' waking us kids, with the most gratifying smile on their face, followed by the traditional 'yennai theichi kuliyal' (Its a ritual in the Tamil household on the day of Diwali, where few drops of gingely oil would be massaged onto the scalp before one takes bath with refreshing sheekai powder); Then we would be adorned with new clothes and accessories following which, we all together have the never changing Diwali breakfast (I'm sure you would have guessed what it is). We would then light up the looooong incense stick (believe me, it is as long as thigh bone or even more) which is a saviour for most of the people like me, who used to be scared of crackers. even to go near the cracker. This bursting of crackers ceremony would extend till late night with intermittent breaks in between for a sumptuous lunch and scrumptious dinner. Amidst these celebration, there would a silly game, where we would go around the street, compare the houses, for the one with the maximum amount of the newspaper bits (that are rolled inside the crackers) is the winner of that street or complex, for more paper bits correspond to more crackers.
Eventually the days flew in the wink of an eye. As I grew up, I saw the diyas, those traditional little oil lamps, being replaced by multi-coloured fairy lights hanging above the windows. Even bursting of the crackers have reduced owing to the new norms/rules and being attracted to the term - go green; to have a pollution less Diwali and so on.
And by the time I entered my medical college, Diwali to us only meant an ultra short vacation to 'visit' home, to be surrounded by family and if at all possible, to taste good food. The circumstance changed even further as I set foot as a house surgeon where I was posted in the Emergency Room night duty, handling cases like electric burns to accidental finger amputations from severe RTA to diabetic keto acidosis for the whole 12 hours of duty that kept me on my toes, without being able have a five minutes coffee break. And when you're finally relieved by the duty doctors who take up our jobs for the morning shift, as we walk through the halls of ER with our head held high, only to realize that it was a Diwali night and how much we've missed not being home or the discern that we do not regret it in the slightest, because of what we chose to be..
Moving out of the college, and having crossed 20s, things turn still more strange, as those kids whom we've known from our pre-school have grown up to be practical adults, most of them had left the country for bigger fortunes and others were doing too good in life to be able to find time for an old tradition. As I conclude this article, I am haunted with a slight flavour of helplessness, as my sanity says that nothing is gonna be same, like the way it used to be and I only yearn for those days with a hundred 'what- if's' in my mind.