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| Edited By: Pooja Salvi,Ornella D'Souza |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 04, 2018, 06:25 AM IST
It was a regular Diwali evening back in 2008 when I was 12 years old. My friends and I were making the most of the firecrackers our parents got us that season. Suddenly, a big green bomb burst under the legs of one of my closest friends. He suffered serious burns and was immediately rushed to the hospital. The same evening, a rocket flew up to the top floor of one of the buildings in our complex, hitting a window air conditioner, which burst into flames immediately.
The irresponsibility with which people handle crackers really got to the 12-year-old me and in that instant, I decided I wasn’t going to burst any more crackers.
– Saloni Shelar, student
I was raised by a single mom who worked really hard to put food on the table. My neighbour once bought a ‘suitcase’ full of crackers costing Rs 10,000! I had gone to see the treasure and marvelled at the ‘spoils’ as he showed off about how much they cost. That’s when it dawned on me that my mom had been spending so much money on pointless crackers, but didn’t get much for herself.
I was 10 then. By that age, I had also gotten involved with wildlife enthusiasts groups. Being surrounded by environmentally conscious people rubbed off on me. Not as a fad, but a realisation that festivals are not about doing more or being grand, it was about being happy. And crackers don’t make me happy.
– Sagar Dave, media executive
I must have been 12 or 13 at the time when my mum sat me and my younger brother down to tell us how firecrackers are made. That was when I got to know firecracker factories employed really young children. She told us how they contract chronic illnesses, and even death when making these in dangerous conditions. At the same time, we discussed how firecrackers make for momentary bursts of happiness, nothing substantial. Then she asked us to make a choice – did we want to buy more crackers?
We didn’t.
– Meeth Shah, real estate development manager
At one time, Diwali for me was synonymous with crackers. One evening in 2006, my friends and I were bursting crackers in our complex, and once done, we put all the empty boxes in a small pit in the garden and lit a fire. We were young and naive, and wanted to make those cool bonfires we saw in movies. There was a big blue polythene bag lying in one corner and we thrust it in the pit. There was a big blast and we suffered burns – a close friend suffered 46 per cent burns and me, 32 per cent.
We came face to face with the irresponsibility surrounding firecrackers. We didn’t even need our parents forbidding us henceforth, we were shaken up ourselves.
– Ashwin Shetty, advertising professional
Bursting crackers on Diwali is also associated with how good your year was financially. The kapda market, where my business is based, always looks forward to Diwali for spending a lot on firecrackers, to show how financially good the year went by was. This is a tradition that many people still follow. After one particularly difficult year where we couldn’t burst crackers, we didn’t go back.
There are many other ways of feeling great on a festival than literally setting your money on fire and enjoying the light for less than a minute.
– Harshvardhan Mishra, business consultant
On Diwali night, when I was 24, I went to wish my neighbours, an aged couple. I saw them both huddled in a corner in that large house, trying to stuff cotton in their ears and silence the noise of the crackers bursting just below their balcony. I looked out and saw people revelling in the joy of Diwali, oblivious of what this couple was going through. I decided then that I can’t stop the world, but I can definitely stop myself. Never again did I burn a cracker.
– Mithu Basu, arts promoter
About 15 years ago, I was in Gujarat for Diwali. Some people were bursting a chain of sutli bombs. I was standing close by and before I knew it, one sutli hit me on the lip. My lips stayed swollen for the next few days. That’s when I gave up bursting crackers. Besides, I am an animal lover and have had pets for over a decade now. It hurts to see the pain they go through. My dog is so petrified of crackers, she literally pees with a half squat throughout Diwali. I’ve also seen a dog run helter-skelter on the roads – completely disoriented. I’ve been told that dogs hear crackers at three times the decibel than we do.
– Forum Gandhi, media professional
I was 10 and at my father’s ancestral house for Diwali. I found crackers scary, but everyone coaxed me into lighting one sparkler for good luck. I attempted to light one, and then I only remember an explosion. The cracker was spurious, and burst in my hand instead of giving off the sparkles it was supposed to, and I received a third-degree burn.
I was lucky to still have a hand, they said, as this happened in a small town outside Kolkata with not much medical help. It was an excruciating year of treatment, learning to write all over again, physiotherapy, and wearing scary looking pressure gloves to school. Kids called me the Aahat hand – I still have the scars. I mostly went through life angry with my family for making me light the cracker that I never wanted to in the first place!
– Ipsita Bandyopadhyay, qualitative market research
