Last Thursday and Friday, India found herself celebrating Diwali.
Diwali is the Hindu “Festival of Lights”. Candles and lamps are lit the world over to celebrate the victory of brightness over darkness within ourselves. It is a time for new beginnings, a time to ward out internal evils and find instead an inner, peaceful good.
It is also a time, it seems, to scare the bejibbers out of expats.
I was awoken on Thursday morning at 6:00am. Boom, boom, BOOM! I jumped. There’s a bomb attack! … I still haven’t registered with the British Consulate … Chennai is under siege … I’ll never be found … b*gger, b*gger, b*gger …
I looked outside. I couldn’t see anything, but I could still hear explosions. Sweet Olga was sleeping peacefully. I ran to Berat and Pasha’s room – Pasha was not there, Berat, too, was away with the fairies. BOOM! Another one. Neither of them stirred.
Was I going crazy? How could they not hear? Should I stay inside: but I have to go to work, I am the only one on my shift! Oh: I will call them. But no, my phone was stolen, I don’t have a new sim card yet … b*gger, b*gger, b*gger …
Olga awoke.
Me: “Olga! What is the noise, what’s going on!”
Olga: “Uh … it’s the crackers … the fire crackers … Diwali …”
Crackers. No, they cannot be crackers. Crackers make a gentle tinker-boom and release pretty lights into the sky. Olga assured me that I was not going to die, and that I should just walk to work. In the end I did, and was assured, by evil, laughing colleagues, that they were indeed just crackers.
It seems that this is how Diwali is celebrated in India. Home made explosives, set off not by big men with big gloves behind big fences, but by teenagers in the street. I praise the Lord that I escaped the festival unscathed. (Burns admitted to hospital triple in India during Diwali!)
Relief only came on my weekend flight to Hyderabad. We took off in darkness, and a silence descended over the aircraft. It was black outside, and I finally saw the pretty lights, as real fireworks illuminated Chennai’s (smoggy) dusk.
I had found my inner peace.
Going Home to India 