Touchstones: Our loud festivities & what comes day after

It’s that time of year in Delhi when you wish you were anywhere else but here. Parties, festivals and celebrations — everything converges as the city gets ready to greet the nicest weather (neither hot, nor cold) that we have just twice a year. This magical time comes briefly and one is tempted to go and explore all the wonderful music festivals, exhibitions and shopping offers that announce unbelievable deals and temptation. But wait, the season is not as idyllic as I have made it sound. Did I mention the noise, the pollution and the heart-attack producing traffic jams? The eagerly-awaited season, like so much else, has undergone a makeover for the worse in the last few years.

For almost a month, there wasn’t a single week where we had all our meals at home. As I mentioned, someone somewhere was celebrating a landmark event and it was impossible to opt out of it. Apart from the rise in our cholesterol and sugar levels, came the long hours spent on the choked roads. Cars, with their engines running, added to the emission levels as breathing the toxic air outside was not the right choice, no matter how eco-conscious you may be. And woe betide you if you had a call of nature to urgently attend to. I have elderly friends whose advice is to wear an adult diaper just in case.

We are so proud of our devotion to family traditions that we continue to follow them, even if our ways of celebrating them have lost their essential religious core. Sociologist Ashis Nandy calls this the carnivalisation of religion. So, whether it is Diwali or Holi, Bhai Dooj or Raksha Bandhan, we go into a collective frenzy of spending and eating.

Who are the fools who now cook feasts and traditional sweets at home? Long live Haldiram’s and his tribe delivered by Blinkit and Swiggy! And with the warning that khoya and paneer are widely adulterated with plastic, many have switched to good old Amul and Cadbury’s to buy mass-produced sweets that come with an ISI mark. As for clothes and jewellery, the madness has reached astronomical heights. Dhanteras is not considered properly honoured unless one buys gold or silver. Time to put all the undeclared cash by those who hide it to good use?

Where is this leading to? Increased levels of pollution, corruption and bribes and a false sense of values that make every home a monument to vulgarity and greed. Bosses groan when another gift-bearing car arrives, but the loot is discreetly sold later by their canny wives.

Let’s come to the great bane of Diwali: the crackers. In Delhi, only green crackers will henceforth be allowed and between two hours this time. Our honourable Supreme Court has given its assent to a plea made by the administration, although how this will be monitored remains a worry. Schools make children design posters to promote responsible behaviour but parents smile indulgently as they shrug and say, ‘Kya karein ji? Bachche mante hi nahin!’

My morning newspaper has declared that Noida (supposed to be a green suburb) is already in the danger zone where air quality is concerned. Await now the annual lung disease epidemic that is nature’s return gift to us after we have choked her.

To lighten this, let us turn to the latest Trump performance in Egypt. At what every commentator has dubbed a cringe-worthy event, we had a line-up of heads of state being treated like obedient schoolboys waiting to be noticed. His noble intentions were given a rehearsed speech by the Pakistani PM, who said that the Nobel Peace Prize should have gone to his benefactor. Wisely, Modi kept away, citing a prior commitment (a visiting Mongolian President), to not jump up (like the British PM) and come at a 20-minute notice.

Turn now to the Af-Pak affair and the violence along the Durand Line. Balochistan and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa area is aflame and Trump’s favourite military dictator (try and get your head around this oxymoron) is battling unprecedented violent civil riots all over the country. Apart from our schadenfreude glee at this, I was reminded of a certain man from there, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, widely known as Frontier Gandhi, whom everyone has forgotten. He towered over the region in every sense and was so impressed by Gandhiji’s civil disobedience movement that he collected a band of like-minded followers (called the Khudai Khidmatgars) to preach non-violence and religious harmony among the warring tribes of the region. He was the only Pakistani to ever receive the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest national award.

To those of the younger generation who may not be familiar with the history of that turbulent region, I would urge them to read about the high value placed by its tribal population on honour and loyalty. Their fierce commitment to these is only matched by their courage on the battlefield. Asif Munir is a pygmy compared to the Afghans and tribal leaders in Pakistan’s western region. It is just a matter of time before they, too, like the Russians and the Americans, will have to retreat dishonourably from this war.

The western world has yet to understand what price it will pay for backing the wrong leaders. Let’s start that list with America’s Trump.

Happy Diwali to all!

— The writer is a social commentator