Happy Diwali! Bring On The Magical Melange Of Fire, Light & Sound

Diwali is here. The kid at home wants a blast, literally. You want to go for softer crackers. He would like, among other crackers, the ones with great bang value. Mellowed down by age, you would prefer the beauty of a flower pot erupting in colour and light against the backdrop of darkness or a ground spinner emitting bright sparks while doing mad rounds on the floor. While standing before the shop, your mind drifts.

There’s something fascinating about fire. Generations apart, you and your children may look at it differently, but the attraction to it transcends time. It’s a force of both creation and destruction. Human life took a giant leap after our ancients understood it. Without it there would be no civilisation, no absolute dominance of humans in the animal world. But people were quick to understand its destructive power as well. As we witness long-distance missiles in the ongoing Middle-East war or the Russia-Ukraine conflict reducing targets to a haze of flames and smoke, we stay more amazed than shocked. Fire has amazing potential. Besides emitting heat, light and smoke, it signifies power too.

But the beauty of it is that this is the only element of nature we have some control of. We cannot control water or air. When waters turn wild, like in a tsunami or a flood, we can do little but stand helpless. The same goes for air. When cyclones devastate our lives, we can only deal with its consequences. Prevention in either case is not in human control. Fire is more comprehensible, though it can go beyond control. Frequent wild forest fires in the civilised world still don’t have an answer.

The human mind has grasped the chemistry of fire. It’s one reason why it renders itself to some degree of control. We know why a cracker would fly into air and burst in myriad colours, why the flowerpot would sizzle and throw up brilliant lights and why a sparkler would behave the way it does once lit. We know how a rocket can blast off to reach into the galaxy to place a satellite among stars or a nuclear explosion can destroy a Hiroshima or Nagasaki. In wars fire is used for its destructive potential. In peace it has uses beneficial to humans.

One cannot be sure when Diwali, the festival of lights, morphed into the festival of sounds. Diyas, candles and lanterns to decorate homes used to be the primary activity. They were accompanied by colourful rangoli on floors of entrances. Somewhere someone realised fireworks could add more excitement to the festive spirit. Yes, it made a good business proposition too with the younger crowd as a ready market. It has caught on. Now, we are so hooked to high decibels that every big occasion, be it a marriage, an immersion procession or the burning of the Ravan during the Dussehra or public festivity of any kind, has to have a noisy celebration. It’s chemistry at work again, cooking up a delicious mix of light and sound.

There’s nothing to be judgmental about the joy of bursting crackers if you are not much worried about air and sound pollution. Buying green crackers could be your service to humanity. But studies say they are only 20 to 30 percent less polluting than regular crackers. Most eco-friendly crackers do not contain barium nitrate, arsenic and magnesium, the most polluting agents, but still they contain harmful chemicals such as aluminum, potassium nitrate and carbon. The real worry, however, is they are a bit expensive and you can never be sure whether the crackers being peddled as ‘green’ are really green. The inventiveness of the sellers can ensure that a copycat label finds place on every packet.

The kid by your side at the shop breaks your train of thought. He is impatient. Green is not so much on his mind as the bang. He begins haggling with you – ‘Papa, this one, this one, this one too, these look good and one last packet please!’ You think about money in your pocket. And sigh. Ah! The conspiracy of light and sound. It’s not chemistry, it’s pure economics now.

You surrender to his persistence. Hell, let him have a blast. It’s only once a year, isn’t it?

(By arrangements with Perspective Bytes)