So in Mumbai, we went berserk and I credit my parents for allowing us to go berserk at the cracker store. We bought sparklers, atom bombs (loud raasi bomb), tadaphadi, flower pots, and what not. My brother’s favourite was the snake. It was nothing but a small black pill on which you put your sparkler or matchstick. From it a long black ‘snake’ would come out. It would emit a horrible smoke and would forever scar the tiles. You could see tiles on the staircase of many buildings scarred thus. One black round mark, where the snake once burned. It was fun and still is but I have no clue why.
Soon we graduated to getting a diwali allowance to buy our fire crackers ourselves. We spent wisely on bombs, rockets and the lot. Carefully avoiding girlie stuff like sparklers and zammen chakris. Though my eternal favourite has always been the flower pot. I have no clue what fascination I have for it. But I remember it being the cracker of choice for me and I would spend a little more on buying the big special flower pot. I would keep it safely and preserve it. The Diwali bursting starts a week before Diwali and we would conserve our crackers to last the whole week. The piece d renaissance would be lit by me at the special moment at the peak of the diwali night. My night / festival was made.
The next day after Diwali was the traditional New Year’s day for us gujjus. And that meant going from cousin’s place to another wishing and greeting each other. It went on for a few years till some politics developed between cousins. One side of the cousins was a squabble over property which gave rise to sub texts in relationships and on the other side was a struggle for dominance. All in all it made for a bitter after taste. Soon enough, the family Diwali tradition changed to getting out of Mumbai during Diwali. If you are not there is no reason to visit them, wot say?
Now many years since … there is no tradition in our family to visit relatives on Diwali or new year day. So we too have followed the tradition of getting out of Mumbai for diwali. This is something that seems to have worked in our favour. Get out of this place. The noise and the pollution has significantly increased over the years making the space completely inhabitable. The one year I was year many years ago made me make up my mind of celebrating Diwali out side in the peace and quiet. When a teeming metropolis like decides to celebrate noise and pollution the only choice you have is to run.
But contrast to that is the Dusherra celebration that happens 20 days prior to Diwali. I love the focal point of the day, which is to make a huge effigy of thr ten headed demon king ravana and burn the hell out of him. This to was something that we were first introduced to while in India. Till then it was just a chapter of our social science text book.
The first one I saw was a huge figure five seven stories tall and full of crackers inside. Bursting it would take all of 30 minutes or more and give a great thrill to many of us. It was clearly one of the high points of childhood celebrations.
Now that Jispa has grown up a bit we tried the last couple of years to take her to Chowpatty and witness the big celebration there also. That too was good fun. For 50 bucks we got the VIP tickets at the RamLeela that was being staged there. And then the end point was the big effigy being burnt.
This time around a couple of months before I saw this kit being retailed at the book store. “make your own ravanna”. A kit that had color drawings and instructions to make your own three dimensional effigy. That was cool I though and bought the kit. I promised myself to make it and figure out if we could burn this ourselves. I missed the Dusherra deadline but I saw and remembered it on the night we were to burn it.
I removed the covers expecting to simply punch out the perforated stuff and assemble it in 20 minutes. How tough could it get.
To my chagrin I saw large sheets with color prints on them. No perforations. I had to cut them all. The prints were nice and detailed which meant even more time in cutting them. The hair, the moustache and the head gear and to add to it, Ravanna has ten heads. What a pain. Some of the stuff was to be cut across circles, which meant plenty of small cuts on the paper so that thy fold in a circle and lots of irritation. The hands had to be stuck to the body using glue, his skirt to the legs, his head to the neck and what not. Very very painful. Jasmine had joined me soon enough and both of us were figuring this big mammoth task. Poor Jispa who I thought would love to do it was quickly sidelined. We had to give her simple cutting work. After some time we realised that the glue wouldn’t be enough and in came in the artillery. The humble scotch tape and the even humbler stapler came in. a stick there a tuck here and a punch in there somewhere.
We had to abandon the project for the night to catch it the next morning. Jispa was unwell and was at home. We tried to take it up again and try to get the pieces to all add up. It was so frustrating and tiring. Jasmine remarked that ‘she is going to love to see this guy burn’. I concurred. It was a real pain putting it all together. I guess we just don’t understand what it is to make life easy for the customers. I mean the least was that they could give was pre-cuts or perforations. I don’t visualise anyone less than a 14 year old managing this. In fact I am planning to give this project to my new team in order to help them get a hang of what it means to have bad design, bad instructions and bad user experience.
Five hours and 15 man hours later the Ravanna was up. Finally standing. The big boy with all his ten heads and a menacing smile with a sword and a shield. There boy. All that sweat was worth it. Here the BIG FELLA is in all his glory.
Since Jispa was a bit unwell, the week passed by with the man remaining on top of our book case. Today we got the opportunity to burn the fella. We called in Jispa’s friend, bought 100 bucks of sparklers, and set the fellow on fire. Like all dad occasions, this too passed by without me really sitting back and enjoying it. I was busy making it stand, then setting it alight and then managing the kids so that they don’t get burnt. But it was fun any ways.
Here is he just before he was burnt.
The last bit was the clincher – Jasmine said “not bad eh? Its worth doing it the next time as well. Lets buy one and keep right away. I don’t think it will be in stock.”I agree. Haha. After all that work, it did turn out quite a nice experience in the end. A sweet ending is just so important. With the Ravanna, we burnt all the ill will we had towards the guys who sold the dam thing. At the end we were left with sweet memories. I was telling Jasmine that "these things are the best projects. You spend time to make them and then you just have to burn them. You enjoy the process and then the thing also does not take up any space in the house. "
Jai Lankesh!
