Through the cracks

Ratna Raman

WHEN we were little and heard one language at home, another on the streets and an altogether different language at school, we plunged headlong into entirely different worlds, with help from different sounding words.

Take the word ‘cracker’, for instance. In fiction, talking parrots often announced that they wanted a cracker. The cracker, a dry salt biscuit, was associated with parrot food in my mind for a long time. By the eighties, Britannia supplied cream crackers that were not creamy, but dry and suffocating. Crackers with tea was trendy, but seemed superfluous in the presence of sweet biscuits. Our round or kandeel-shaped mathri, plain or embellished with spinach and methi and a smear of pickle remained preferred favourites. 

While growing up, Diwali was more about lighting oil lamps and making extraordinary sweets in every household. Firecrackers were called pattasu (Tamil) and patakas (Hindi). The Diwali firework hamper had items with special names in every regional language. Anaars, phuljhadis, rockets, bombs and flares were in use, in limited quantities. 

Our skies remained blue and our streets were yet to be littered with the debris of shredded, burnt paper. Perhaps money was in short supply and people had reservations about allowing it to go up in smoke. Very few of us knew that poor air quality could be life-threatening or that loud ‘decibels’(vibration levels) could deafen.

 A ‘crack’ is an uneven line that is formed between two surfaces, signifying damage. ‘Crackles’are minute surface lines created in paintwork, varnish, glass and ceramic. Ancient porcelain and red cement floors are usually characterised by crackle, fine hair lines that appear all along the surface.

‘Crackle’ also refers to a series of sharp, rustling sounds, made by twigs, or logs burning in a blaze or  sparklers being lit. Possibly, the sound effect inspired Cadbury to christen its crispie-filled chocolate bars as ‘Crackle.’

‘Hair-line cracks’refer to lines as thin as hair whose presence indicates a break in the bone surface. Fortunately, modern diagnosis and casts enable speedy healing.

Many a lay reader ‘cracked up’ (burst into laughter) when Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer fed painkiller syrup to the cracks in the sitting room floor,  effectively disposing of  unpalatable medicine he was required to consume.

On a serious note, human use of crackers ‘fell through the cracks’ (failed to hold up to) of environment friendly practice a long time ago. The children who laboured in Sivakasi’s cracker factories shame us no longer. Harmful levels of air pollution, hearing disabilities, stress and fire-related accidents are now incorporated as part of peacetime celebrations. Solutions continue to remain out of sight.

Revoking and reimposing bans on firecrackers, hasn’t really ‘cracked the case’ (solved). It has resulted in a ‘push-me-pull-you’ situation. (The ‘push-me-pull-you’, Hugh Lofting’s two-headed mythical creature in the Dr Dolittle series, invariably found itself in difficulties since each of its two heads pulled in opposite directions.)

Privileged, habit-driven adults, mesmerised by displays of firework continue to behave as though perennially on ‘crack’(drugs). In the long run, fireworks aren’t really all that they are cracked up to be (overrated, disappointing). ‘The mirrorcrack’d from side to side’ (Alfred Tennyson, Lady of Shalott; also title of Agatha Christie’s book) highlights the limitations of reality understood by viewing reflections through a mirror. Let us examine afresh how protracted environmental abuse by a select few accelerates the  ‘crack up’ (breakdown) of our fragile universe.