India, and Mr. God

So long since I have written anything. And there’s so much I want to write.

But I ll write about what’s on the top of my mind right now.

Yesterday (Diwali), Rajni aunty, mom’s friend, came to our house. Her son, (Mr. X we’ll call him) went straight to everyone’s feet wishing them Happy Diwali, conjuring a smile on everyone’s face as they blessed him (I know, a strange custom. Hopefully will be prevalent only for one more generation). Then he dashed towards the glass table where we had kept crackers we had dried all day long on the roof. We didn’t buy any crackers this year, we used only what we had from last year.

We had a special matchstick that was a mini-sparkler. Mr. X took that out. I don’t know what possessed him, but what he did next was insane. He lit the match stick, on top of the stack of crackers.

The crackers caught fire. Yes, inside my house. There was a stack of loose electric crackers that caught fire and thus were lighting each other. And all of them started bursting one after the other. The whole commotion went on for around a minute after which the electric crackers ran out. After the smoke settled, I saw a few atom bombs (green coloured crackers filled with gunpowder tightly wrapped with rope) lying on the glass table.

I couldn’t help thinking what might have happened had that the atom bombs gotten lit on the glass table. (Anyone heard of pipe bombs used in delhi blasts? A Hint : Its the shreds that cause the maximum damage. Not the shockwave)

A question to “modern” parents : should children be beaten up for their misdeeds? You decide.

Now, coming back to the title of the post. After the smoke settled, Mom took a broom and swiped all the leftovers to one side. (Our sofa got burnt partially). After swiping the burnt cracker papers to one side, as she was about to swipe them out of the door, Mr. X’s mom says “Don’t swipe them out of the house. It’s considered a sin to clean the house during Diwali.”

After all this. I don’t think God would mind.

Will India ever prosper? Not until our value system and reason is so deeply screwed up with religion and baseless customs.

Here’s an article I read minutes after writing my post, reinforcing what I just wrote.