Satire | The delights of Diwali

This year, I bet my patriotic pop was louder than yours

Are you still recovering from the excesses of Diwali? I am, too. It was particularly stressful this year because I was determined to have a politically correct Diwali. This meant that first I had to buy a huge number of crackers guaranteed to make the air around my home hang like a grey pall for at least 12 hours while simultaneously deafening my neighbours. It took some effort and a lot of money, but I managed it. With help from my spouse, my child, my watchman and family, and neighbourhood volunteers.

Second, I wanted to make sure my Diwali was linguistically and genealogically correct. I wondered for a long time whether or not to light diyas because someone told me diya was an Urdu word. But I decided to take research into my own able hands and voila, my problems were solved. Did you know that ancient Indians had gone to the Horn of Africa and given the people there the idea for earthen lamps? That country was thenceforth called Djibouti, whose name comes from diya (lamp) + jiba (life). Lighting diyas is therefore good because it rightly recalls this glorious past.

Lighting tooni bulbs or fairy lights was a much easier decision because, of course, from Mahabharata times we have been importing these from Tunisia to use as streetlights and that makes them very ethnic chic.