Light a lamp, gift a book on Diwali.....by Brij Bhushan Goyal
Chandigarh: The festival of lights- Deepawali, of late is losing the serenity as celebrations are becoming superfluous due to show of artificial sheen which always lacks soulful inspirations.
Certainly, we are not celebrating the festival of light in the true sense of enlightening our souls which is the real purpose of the festival, whatever may be the mythological, historical or religious beliefs of our Indian society across all the classes and religions.
Lighting a ceremonial lamp
Often, there has been a practice to light a traditional lamp in many homes every day. Particularly, many mothers do it with meticulous regularity with prayers for the family & Sarbat -Da -Bhla (Sarve Bhavantu Sukhin—Welfare of All).
In many institutional inaugurations, the ceremonial lighting of lamps does take place, but that has become more of a ritual to be forgotten about it’s real intent to take home the message.
On Deepawali, we do light lamps in plenty , but the traditional serenity of Deepawali celebrations has been lost as of now which was seen some generations back before the advent of modern electricals & electronics as dazzling lights are blinding our true vision towards divinity of the festival.
Even that generation of people who were grounded for serenity and purpose of such festivals are eloping so soon since age spares none.
How much of that simplicity without any modern extravaganza has been passed to the posterity can only be guessed as the succumbing of all of us seems near complete to the showing-up of artificiality even in such pious festivals. We need to revert to the old ways to retrieve what is lost now.
Deepawali sans smoke & sound
Polluting firecrackers with frightening sounds and smoke take the sentiment to the maddening high till late night every year. The pollution in the atmosphere in the days after Deepawali is horrendous.
Burning such firecrackers was never our tradition quite some decades before. The sound crackers were originally invented and used as early as 200 BCE in China when heated bamboo exploded after it was heated continuously.
The Chinese named for firecrackers "exploding bamboo”. Later at the end of the 19th century they made firecrackers using straw paper to make the body of the firecracker, while the fuse was made of paper imported from Japan made from the inner lining of the bamboo plant, or rice paper, stiffened with buckwheat paste etc.
Later more toxic material was added. Unfortunately, we borrowed this practice from Chinese tradition where people compete with each other by playing with firecrackers on certain days.
In India, NGT has enacted a ban on the sale and use of certain crackers on Diwali festival since 2020 which produce dust, smoke and sound beyond certain limits.
However, there is no effective check on production and sale of crackers containing harmful pollutants such as Aluminum, Barium, Potassium Nitrate and Carbon. Saner outcries against the menace are wanting and people continue to suffer.
The extravaganza of sugary sweets
Evening knowing well that sweets are made from white sugar ,adulterated milk and other products mostly, we consume and exchange in plenty with the false belief of sweets consumption as a must This extravaganza of sugary sweets is also adding to our already deteriorating health as we are only building a large corpse of diabetic people who always remain hooked on medicines and permanent solutions to be found are not so easy. This also leads to many other complications affecting our heart and kidneys too.
Damage to our health is thus complete and post Deepawali we are under more stress which this supreme festival otherwise should have brought to us the necessary serenity and happiness which we longed for months in wait for this day.
Gift A Book & Earn Blessings
The best way of celebrating Deepavali with our near ones can be through gifts of books. A good book never betrays and is always a perennial lamp on our tables to light on through the word wisdom it contains.
Let us help our children to get hooked to books so that they build their personal libraries too. A good book is always a befitting light-house for our ship of life. An Indian philosopher Prof. Baljit Singh Sajjad (1929-1996) once also wrote, “ A library is an ever-blossoming garden from where the seekers of knowledge gather the honeyed sweetness of life.”
Let us take a pledge to light a lamp to enlighten the soul by donating someone a book on Deepawali to help harness the divine radiance of the word of wisdom which sweetens our lives forever and also keeps our spirits in Chardikala always
. We can also encourage purchasing for our homes as well as for gifting some permanent plants to encourage greenery and enabling much needed oxygen in polluting times.
The recent Sahit Sanjeevani -A Punjabi book by a retired bureaucrat J B Goyal is already talk of the day and is much sought after as it gives the crux of the world's famous literary figures over the years . There are many more available ,we only need to lay hands on books in a nearby bookstore besides online availability.
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Brij Bhushan Goyal, Senior Citizen and Social Activist
brijbgoyal@gmail.com
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