The day after

 

I was expecting a pollution peak on Diwali night. Everything has been politicized and everything within politics has been communalized. I saw lots of social media content giving a clarion call to the Hindus to celebrate Diwali with clanging, banging gusto, especially when others can kill animals on their festival, so why shouldn’t we slaughter the clean air on ours. It had its effect. Despite a ban on the firecrackers in the Delhi NCR, these were sold in open, purchased with a right to unrestricted religious celebration and banged and burst with yelling enthusiasm. I also love to celebrate Diwali as a Hindu, but I care for our lungs as well, especially the elders.

The night was breezy which dispersed the pollutants. In the morning there was no eye-burning smog. A cool breezy morning with tolerable level of pollution. Elated over this I carry my Diwali celebration into the countryside with a walk in solitude. Many parts of India are celebrating Diwali today because the lunar calendar overlaps two days of the sun calendar. It gives us the option to celebrate our festival on two days. Good for business; good for the people as well, enabling them to carry extra festive spirit.  

It’s a bright day, the horizon slightly smoggy in the distance. Mother nature spreads a breezy cool hand like a windscreen wiper to take away the pollutants. A perfect time to appreciate Celosia argentea or Plumed cockscomb blooms in a corner. All it needs is a bit of sunshine, dewy moisture, cool breeze and no human foot intruding, and mother nature offers a lovely bouquet of smiles to a solitary walker with poetic sensitivities. We humans might consider them as weeds but they are a perfect breakfast table for a flock of moths who are high on nectar. These are lovely finger-shaped creamy blooms with pink spires on the top. Plumed cockscomb indeed—fluffy with a slightly curved creamy erection, milky white head topped with a pink spire.

There is a lonely date palm standing in the empty harvested fields. Dry paddy crofts too low and lifeless to give it any sense of clothing and company. It must be missing the company of its brothers. Sadly, there will soon be a world when the trees will be barcoded and numbered. No worries. Let’s make the most of what is left. Thankfully we are the generation that is lucky to see unnumbered and uncoded trees.

In a corner there are golden shades of ripe paddy waiting to be harvested—a prelude to nice, luscious aroma on your table.

I stand under a blackberry tree and stare into the bluish haze in the east. A trickle of sunrays plays on my face giving me an insight:

There is light everywhere and darkness alongside. You have to position yourself in life to have your portion of light rays and your little puddle of shadow.