Exaggeration...

Its Diwali, the festival of light, everyone is very happy wearing new clothes, decorating their houses with lights, eating lots of sweets and expressing their happiness by firing crackers. I am in India for Diwali after 4 years, sitting on the couch, annoyed by the noise pollution caused by the crackers and thinking. This piece of my write-up is the result of it. Just like my previous post, I will raise some questions here and will try to answer them.

Do we really have to waste so much of electricity in lighting up our houses? Don't we light up our houses everyday then why a special day to spend more electricity.. I can understand that people are really happy and they want to celebrate this festival of light so they use electricity to express their happiness but doesn't this expression of happiness should have some limits?! On one hand people complain for not having sufficient electricity on a "normal" day and on the other hand the same people waste that electricity. Instead of blaming government or any authority isn't it better to stop and check our own actions!!

Is firing crackers a status symbol? You bought crackers of Rs 2000 so I must buy it for Rs 5000.. and burn them all.. do we know how much noise and air pollution this way of "expression of happiness" causes?! Anything over the limits is bad and leaves an after effect but no one cares for it. Thousands of years back when human civilization started prospering and these kind of festivals were brought into existence, the festivals were not harmful because firstly, there were very few people to celebrate it compared to now and secondly they didn't have too much to do and even then they expressed their happiness.

The Times of India news

Now moving on from Diwali to a general question of donation in a temple. Ranging from a big celebrity to a poor person donates in a temple like Tirupati Balaji. Wealthy donates chunks of money and poor donates their hair which is later sold to toy factories. Wisdom doesn't come with wealth this can be proved here. Isn't  helping a needy a far better job than donating crores of rupees in a temple, and when we know India is full of unprivileged people?! All these donated money gets blocked and never used in economy. Instead they should be used for the welfare of the deprived. India will be a better place if organised.

How can I forget the lavish and extravagant indian marriages while talking about exaggeration.. some things are really unbelievable in this country.. out of the total expenditure in such celebrations only some looks reasonable.. I can understand that all the important people needs to be invited, gifts to the bride and groom needs to be given, clothing and jewellery are required too but why all those band baja and Dj music? Now marriages are a show of status.. more you spend higher is your status in the society.. by spending more we are raising the minimum expenditure bar and that pressurizes other not-so-wealthy people to spend in their family weddings but who cares!!

There is so much of illiteracy, so many people are sufferers of natural calamities in India if we can use this amount of money to educate one child per person or help those survivors to get back to their feet, much of the nation's problem will be solved and we would build a better society for our next generations. Its high time to pause and think about our own actions and draw a line between necessary and unnecessary things on which we are wasting our resources. Otherwise forget about the nation's development.