India’s festival season kicks of with the low-key Naga Panchami & followed by Krishna Janmashtami, Ganesha Puja & the big ones in Oct, Nov & Dec (Christmas included).
From close to 2 years now, the global pandemic has ravaged the world & it doesn’t discriminate between your caste, color, creed or nationality. Developing nation like ours with huge population had to bear the brunt in its 1st wave & 2nd wave. Yes, vaccination has been a great savior & we recording meticulously in media –1 crore jabs per day is perhaps a great triumph for the state & central governments. But public memory is very short lived, let’s not forget gut wrenching stories in May-June 2021 where the media spewed venom on all about the lack of oxygen cylinders across hospitals.
The same media will start celebrating the festivals too & recording which celebrity is holding their Ganesh aarti or Durga Havan or Navratri Gombe Habba !Am not against celebrations at all, but lets exercise caution, yes aware the tourism & hospitality sectors were badly hit & there has been quite a bit stories of lay offs & retrenchment and the economy limping back to normalcy is a sign of hope & things being ‘normal’(don’t know what the new ‘normal’ holds for us though !)
But remember the new age Gods & Goddesses with just 2 hands like all of us are our healthcare workers who have worked relentlessly & many have lost lives trying to save ours in India & rest of the world. They are the ones who truly saved us from the demon of this century –the corona virus. Every life is precious & an ode to our Doctors, Nurses & all the support staff will be in real means a celebration of festivals of the Living Gods amongst us.
Each diya we light this year might symbolically take away the darkness from our lives, but it has also created a vacuum in somebody’s life with their only bread winner lost to the pandemic, a child whose books snatched away & is selling pens at signals to support the family, senior citizens who perhaps thought of post retirement peaceful life is selling condiments as all life savings vanished in securing a oxygen cylinder for the spouse.
The world will never be the same again for sure as we all have become more sensitive & aware about the uncertainties of life irrespective of the age & social strata we belong to. However, as they say the show must go on & as we gear up to wear our new clothes & kanjeevarams again this festive season, let’s not go overboard & drive the nation into a avoidable 3rd wave with some basic social distancing & protocols. We all have the simply adjust maadi attitude towards many things in life & have conditioned ourselves with a chalta hai as the accepted behavior.
This year loosen your purse strings & be more liberal with your domestic staff, pay advance to your newspaper & milk vendors, don’t haggle with your regular vegetable-fruit vendor. Festivals is not all about celebrating with your families & relatives, it’s also about spreading joy & happiness in lives of people who are less privileged too.
Offices are opening up which is a good sign(Lakshmi), the COVID-19 positivity rate is declining & we are able to conquer it (Durga), colleges are welcoming students(Saraswathi)—so lets WORSHIP FROM HOME this year & pray for a Healthy World, remember the BATS are still watching us so exercise caution & celebrate.
Good thought
Love the thoughtfulness of this article. Couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time than this.