Skip to main content

The Day After


The burnt-out parts of crackers and fireworks
Lay scattered in the yard and road and wherever the eye could reach.
The festival is over.
The intoxication lingered a while.
And that died out too.
Naturally.
Leaving an aftertaste somewhere in the hollows within,
Sweet and bitter, bitterness competing with sweetness.

The sound and fury of the fireworks on the ground and in the heaven
Repeated the same old tales, wise or idiotic – who knows?  Who cares?
Dazzling lights strutted and fretted
Their hour upon the stage
Leaving distorted and gaping fragments behind.

The fragments will be swept into the dustbins of Swachh Bharat
Maybe the next time the Great Actor drives us to the broom store
Or maybe they will be carried away by the winds of time
That blow relentlessly
And mercilessly
Erasing the markings we make on dust.


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Gowthama RajaveluOctober 25, 2014 at 3:28 PM

    Diwali is all about lights not about noise and pollution. But celebration doesn't have any ends Tomichan. Nicely written! Enjoyed reading it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 25, 2014 at 8:41 PM

      As time goes by, celebrations will evolve too, Gowthama. I think there has been some improvement this year compared to previous years. Is it because of the tragedy in Faridabad (cracker shops being gutted) or is it because people are becoming more conscious, I don't know.

      Delete
  2. UnknownOctober 25, 2014 at 4:16 PM

    Its always mixed feelings sir after diwali. This was the first time that as a family we didn't burn crackers and enjoyed the other parts of the festival. As a kid burning the crackers was the most important and I feel a lot of my friends are now doing it only to showoff. So completely related to each word and am still having mixed feelings.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 25, 2014 at 8:42 PM

      The show off plays a big role, Athena. In my city, Delhi, that is what matters more than anything else, I think.

      Delete
    2. Sheeba SreenivasanOctober 26, 2014 at 9:39 PM

      In tamil there is a saying which goes something like charring money i cant find a better way to explain the too much cracker syndrome than literally burning hard earned money.

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 27, 2014 at 2:32 PM

      In Malayalam, the idiom 'Diwali kulikuka' means waste one's entire wealth. I guess it must have come from the way people burnt up money on fireworks. I'm not sure, of course...

      Whatever that be, it's time to reign in certain wasteful practices that are ominous for the planet.

      Delete
  3. D.NambiarOctober 25, 2014 at 7:08 PM

    Very meaningful lines.
    I feel the bitter aftertaste, this time more than ever before. Partly because I haven't been in the country for the past few Diwalis and partly because I hated having to expose my under-one-year old to all that smoke.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 25, 2014 at 8:47 PM

      Apart from the pollution, the "sound and fury" of life itself prompted me to write this, to be frank. The whole second stanza is inspired by Shakespeare's Macbeth: "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
      That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
      And then is heard no more. It is a tale
      Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
      Signifying nothing."

      Delete
  4. VinithaOctober 26, 2014 at 1:48 PM

    Very meaningful poem! I have burned the noisy crackers in my life. And in about 15 years I haven't burned the mild ones either. And After seeing the Diwali mess in Bangalore while I was there, I am not interested at all in "celebrating" Diwali with crackers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 26, 2014 at 6:00 PM

      It will take time for deep-rooted traditions to change. What I'm more interested in is a change in attitude towards religion in general.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whispers of the Self

Book Review Title: The Journey of the Soul Author: Dhanya Ramachandran Publisher: Sahitya Publications, Kozhikode, 2025 Pages: 64 “I n the whispers of the wind, I hear a gentle voice.” Dhanya Ramachandran’s poems are generally gentle voices like the whispers of the wind. The above line is from the poem ‘Seek’. There is some quest in most of the poems. As the title of the anthology suggests, most of the poems are inward journeys of the poet, searching for something or offering consolations to the self. Darkness and shadows come and go, especially in the initial poems, like a motif. “In the darkness, shadows dance and play.” That’s how ‘Echoes of Agony’ begins. There are haunting memories, regrets, and sorrow in that poem. And a longing for solace. “Tears dry, but scars remain.” Shadows are genial too occasionally. “Shadows sway to the wind’s soft sigh / As we stroll hand in hand beneath the sky…” (‘Moonlit Serenade’) The serenity of love is rare, however, in the collecti...
7 comments
Read more

Jatayu: The Winged Warrior

Image by Gemini AI Jatayu is a vulture in Valmiki Ramayana. The choice of a vulture for a very noble mission on behalf of Rama is powerful poetic and moral decision. Vultures are scavengers, associated with death and decay. Yet Valmiki assigns to it one of the noblest tasks of sacrificing itself in defence of Sita. Your true worth lies in what you do, in your character, and not in your caste or even species. [In some versions, Jatayu is an eagle.] Jatayu is given a noble funeral after his death. Rama treats Jatayu like a noble kshatriya who sacrificed his life fighting for dharma against an evil force like Ravana. “You are blessed, O Jatayu!” Rama tells the dying bird. “Even in your last moments, you upheld dharma. You fought to save a woman in distress. Your sacrifice will not go in vain.” Jatayu sacrificed himself to save Sita from Ravana. He flew up into the clouds to stop Ravana’s flight with Sita. Jatayu was a friend of Dasharatha, Rama’s father. Now Rama calls him equal to ...
19 comments
Read more

Mandodari: An Unsung Heroine

Mandodari and Ravana by Gemini AI To remain virtuous in a palace darkened by the ego of the king is a hard thing to do, especially if one is the queen there. Mandodari remained not only virtuous till the end of her life in that palace, but also wise and graceful. That’s what makes her a heroine, though an unsung one. Her battlefield was an inner one: a moral war that she had to wage constantly while being a wife of an individual who was driven by ego and lust. Probably her only fault was that she was the queen-wife of Ravana. Inside the golden towers of Ravana’s palace, pride reigned and adharma festered. Mandodari must have had tremendous inner goodness to be able to withstand the temptations offered by the opulence, arrogance, and desires that overflowed from the palace. She refused to be corrupted in spite of being the wife of an egotistic demon-king. Mandodari was born of Mayasura and Hema, an asura and an apsara, a demon and a nymph. She inherited the beauty and grace of her...
18 comments
Read more

Karma versus Fatalism

By Google Gemini The concept of karma plays a vital role in the Ramayana. You will get the consequences of your actions – that’s what karma means in short. Dasharatha, a king who followed dharma quite meticulously, committed a mistake in his youth. While hunting, he killed a young boy mistaking him for a deer because of a sound. Dasharatha was genuinely repentant of what happened and he went to the blind parents of the boy to atone for his karma. But the understandably grief-stricken blind father of the boy cursed Dasharatha: “Just as we are dying in sorrow caused by the loss of our son, you too shall die grieving the separation from your son.” So, Dasharatha’s death during Rama’s exile was a consequence of his karma. It was predestined, in other words. Immutable fate. Ravana’s karma brings upon him the disastrous end he has. He has lived a life of adharma altogether. Interestingly, it was his fate too following him from another existence altogether. He was destined to live the l...
17 comments
Read more

Nala, Nila, and Ram Setu

Nala and Nila are architects of faith. They built a bridge between the mortal and the divine, a bridge that mortal creatures built for an immortal god, a bridge between human effort and divine purpose. Ram Setu, aka Adam’s Bridge today, connects India with Sri Lanka, from Rameswaram to Mannar Island. It is a 48-km-long chain of limestone shoals, sandbanks, and islets that run across the Palk Strait. The ocean is quite shallow in the region: 1 to 10 metres deep. Science tells us that the ‘bridge’ is a natural formation, resulting from a combination of coral reefs, sand and sediment deposition, tidal and wave actions, and rising sea levels over thousands of years. Some surveys also suggest that the top layer contains stones resting on a base of sand, which is unusual and could indicate human intervention. Moreover, the bridge was reportedly walkable until the 15 th century.  In the Ramayana, the bridge was built by the Vanaras under the guidance of Nala and Nila, sons of Vishw...
18 comments
Read more