Festivals are a great time to bond, share joy, happiness, and togetherness. Diwali is one such festival which brings everybody together to celebrate the joy of the victory of good over evil by lighting lights(diyas), distribution of sweets, and bursting crackers. This festival celebrated on the moon-less night signifies the end of darkness and the beginning of happiness, for which the diyas are lit. The bursting of firecrackers, however, remains a great enigma for as many reasons as the number of crackers exploding that day. Do crackers really 'begin' our happiness? Does lighting a firecracker and veil our very own ears to avoid the sound begin happiness? Regrettably, we’re living in a world where a person believes his status is determined by the amount of cracker-trash found in front of his house; the more I burn, the more rich I am. Essentially, before getting into 'how much we burn', let us ascertain 'why we burn', which chalk up the questions - Why do we burn crackers? What psychological satisfaction do we get by burning crackers? How relevant is it in terms of celebrating the festival by burning crackers in a world where the environment is deteriorating erroneously. Had our approach in teaching kids been 'how to think' rather than 'what to think', we could probably have never reached the stage of global warming and “saving” our environment. Air is polluted with hazardous substances that emit from the crackers by which a record 30 million people were affected by asthma post Diwali the previous year. The run off waste from the firecrackers which when mixes with the ground water forms harmful toxic liquids and result in various diseases including collapse in vital organs of our body. Talking about environment, there has to be a mention about the creatures that co-exist with us - animals. Imagine the plight of the animals that are traumatized by the behemoth sounds and sometimes even leads to death of the creature. However, with the recent rise in the environmental issues, there has been a steady decrease in sales of firecrackers compared to the previous years.
But, it’s entirely not just about the environment that we’re perturbed of, it’s about the children too. Thousands of children are employed on casual basis to meet the demands during the festival season. A recent survey gave light to the details that about half a million children in southern Tamil Nadu are employed around the year to make these fireworks at a sparse Rs.10-15 per day. What worse could it get than denying a child of education and freedom?
Honestly, do we really want a festival which is deemed to bring joy and happiness, to genuinely bring environmental issues and child labour?
Diwali is a festival of lights and not the festival of Noise/Air pollution and child labour. Think wise before acting and say NO to firecrackers!
Signing off,
- A person who has thoroughly been intrigued by the way we “celebrate”.
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