Simple Diwali Celebrations at Suncity

Diwali

Diwali or Deepavali is primarily a Hindu Festival, but it is celebrated by pretty much everyone in India. Other than the ritualistic temple visits and pujas, people usually gift sweets or dry fruits and burst crackers. Other than India Diwali is celebrated in Singapore, Mauritius, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago, Malaysia, Myanmar, Fiji and Guyana. 

Firecrackers

A couple of weeks before Diwali a number of cracker shops pop up all over the city. I love the rocket fireworks that go up in the sky and burst into an array of colors, but then they are pretty costly and unless you have a huge open space or terrace to burst them its not usually feasible. This time it was a pretty low key affair for me though. We just got some small fireworks - a couple of loud bombs, sparklers, chakris and flower pots. There were a few rockets too but they were pretty simple.

Suncity

Living in large apartment complexes is sometimes a great boon, especially with a view of the lake. Neighbors and the Apartment Association usually light up the buildings in an array of colors and you can spot awesome fireworks for days from the balcony. For safety reasons bursting crackers is only allowed in the adjoining playground. Though its safer than doing the same near the buildings it gets a bit risky even otherwise. We closely dodged 3 rockets that misfired and it could have been pretty bad if even one had hit us. Then there are crazy people who have no regard for other's safety leave alone their own. Some people were lighting crackers in their palms and throwing them at the last moment. While it was obviously dangerous for them to do that, since they did not regard their limbs to be disposable we didn't really care. But they were throwing the bombs pretty close to us and that got pretty irritating. Thankfully it didn't last for too long.

Bursting Crackers

So we found the safest place in the playground and started with our small bunch of firecrackers. It was awfully difficult to get pictures of the rockets but I managed to capture the rest. In spite of our low key collection of firecrackers we took almost 2 hours to burst them all. Only one of our rockets misfired and  narrowly missed a van parked nearby. We too had our scary moments when others rockets misfired and narrowly missed us. We actually had to duck and get out of its way.

This is the time when driving on the streets and even walking is pretty risky because of firecrackers misfiring. Not to mention the heavy pollution this causes. Well if you are celebrating or not I wish you have a safe and happy Diwali.