Expressions

I could not hate my life more than I did today. Today is Deepavali-Festival of lights and I am sitting here writing a blog. During this day, my father, who is a hyper energetic lazy man, wakes us all up at 3 am and drives us one after another into the bathroom, and my mother, stuffs something in our mouth even before we had a chance to open our eyes and see what she is stuffing. Then she makes us sit on the floor and draws something with turmeric and kumkum in our palms and legs and generously pours oil on our heads, that the oil starts dripping all over your face and dress that even the person who hates to take bath, 'll run towards the bathroom to get rid of the grease that is conquering every inch of you. Then comes the best part, after a huge effort of getting rid of the oil, my mother presents our new dresses for the day, and when we are about to wear them, she stops and says "ooooh nan manjal thadava maranthuten" (i forgot to put turmeric for your dresses). This is a tradition in our family and in many families, before we do something auspicious, the things involved are given a touch of turmeric, so that whatever is happening becomes a success. Then we wear our new dress and my mother hands over one sparkler to each one of us and asks to play with it and change the clothes as fire from the crackers might make small holes in them. When I was a child I used to think she was crazy, now i see her point :D. Then when the day breaks, we start distributing the sweets that my mother made to our neighbors and our neighbors too send across their sweets, which sometimes had no resemblance to the real ones. Then we go to the temple, have a family get-together, get blessing from elders, which comes with money ;) Have a sumptuous meal, watch TV non-stop, it is day of rest for the books :), and start bursting crackers. The happiest of all of us is our mother while bursting crackers. She is very frightened to burst them, but she used to never give up. She takes a meter long paper and lights one end of it with fire and places the cracker in the other end. We all wait for a lifetime for the fire to reach the other end, and finally when it is near the other end, the fire gets bored and it extinguishes. So again my mother comes with another paper, this just goes on and on.
Today, morning, I woke up at 8 am, saw that I was running late, quickly took a shower; spoke to my parents with the crackers bursting in the background. To shake off my dullness, had a quick chat with one of my friend, came to the lab getting wet as I did not open my windows to see if it was raining and after I saw I was in no mood to climb up my stairs to take the umbrella. But since I like the rain I was ok, but it is not always nice to see the people at work, when you are drenched in water, but today I was not going to worry. Coming to this place has made my happiest day of the year, the dullest day of the year. Just now had lunch, raw carrot salad, boiled carrot with pasta, one cup of curd and one banana. I can't hate my life more. Next year where ever I am, I am going to India and be with my parents and wake up at 3 am for diwali.

Ananthi Sankaran