Deepavali

The comments made by Ramu and Gayathri remind me of the Deepavalis that we, as children, celebrated. It was not very different. On Deepavali eve, we would eagerly await the distribution of the crackers. We would sit in a semicircle around appa who would give the items one by one to us. The very young ones would not get the exploding varieties. And the total cost of the patakas per person was only around five rupees. Most of the actual bursting was done by the slightly older children like Ramakrishnan and myself. The lighting of each item was preceded by an announcement of whose it was, e.g. this is Lux's chittu kuruvi!

Now I find that even the younger people are not very keen to rise too early just to burst the crackers.