The Popular Tyohar 

It’s Diwali and as the entire country and people around the the world are ready to brace themselves for a sweet-a-licious mania, savoring on all kinds of food, basking on millions of photons, exchanging gifts (that are a measure of one's standard in the Indian society), and doing one more job that all of us are good at i.e. judging people.

However weird it may sound but judging people not only on the basis of the religion they follow, from something as materialistic as clothes and cell phones but also from the things one does, which attracts awkward faces from the so called educated citizens of modern India.

 I would like to narrate two incidents today and recognizing that we Indians are touchy and sensitive about issues such as religion, I would like to request (easy to become sensitive casualities) to please read the below incidents without patriarch spectacles.

Incident 1

Diwali had come and the young and vibrant Ms Malik was excited as she had just shifted to a new town. A well paying job, a great circle of colleagues cum friends, a great looking house. She had it all. It was as if the whole world had opened its arms and embraced her.

She was too excited as it was her first Diwali away from Ammi and Abbu and drenched in nostalgia with memories from her childhood, she embarked on a shopping spree that morning.

Returning home late in the evening she baked a chocolate fudge, nice and velvety, decorated her own world with lights and candles and diyas. She was too excited to be mowed down by anybody. The living room clock showed 8 and she went out to decorate her door with lights and keep diyas at the entrance of her door.

It was when she was decorating that she heard her neighbor murmur, “Yeh bhi Manaate hai?”

And the always cheerful Ms. Malik had a spike of both anger and sadness at the same time. Leaving the unlit diya she went inside. She wanted to punch her neighbor who though a professor of sociology at a very prestigious college was an owner of cheap thinking. And she had become a victim that night.

Incident 2

The festival mood was in full swing for Aadhya. She was very excited for the lavish Diwali party her father was throwing that night. She had her dress sorted, hair done and make up minimum. In short her life was sorted. When she walked down the staircase, she looked like a princess in her warm baby pink gown that attracted several praises from her kins. But as she walked, she heard somebody whisper.

“Had she been thin the dress would have looked a lot better”

Unaware her father was intrigued as he saw his daughter’s wide smile turn into frown with tears just around the corner of her pearl shaped eyes.

Knowing she couldn’t do her job of controlling her emotions better, she left the party and ran to her room, sobbing to sleep.

The above two incidents are clear examples to show that whatever dosage of modern thinking we may feed the Indian mindset. We may never stop judging people.

This festival is a festival of happiness and prosperity, let it not be spoiled by cheap mindsets.