The most important day of Diwali festival, Laxmi Pujan was celebrated with religious fervour and great enthusiasm. There was a little indication that people suffered financially during the Covid19 pandemic and lockdown for the last about 20 months.
Defying the rules of bursting only green crackers and not using fire crackers of loud noise, people enjoyed Diwali on Thursday evening.
Besides religious fervour fire crackers making very loud sound were burnt by the people. It appeared that they are taking revenge of lockdown imposed during last year’s Diwali.
A few fire balloons, which have been banned by the State Government, were also seen in the sky. The fear of Corona appears to have gone totally.
CSIR-NEERI had appealed to the people to monitor noise pollution by downloading an App. However, a casual enquiry revealed that interest in the mission was taken by only a few, who area already in the campaign against pollution or are environmentalists.
Although the festival celebrations in India is essentially related to people coming together, exchanging greetings and celebrating as a community. However, the greetings are exchanged only through social media. Meeting people personally is becoming a rare phenomenon. People come together only during some event and only if invited formally. This form of social distancing was not expected when it was imposed as a preventive measure from Corona.
The changing social values, turning from cohesive society to individualistic nature, may be a serious issue for the Indian society in the near future.
Anyway. It was nice to see people celebrating this Diwali festival, with a renewed vigour.
