Shock and Awe in Bangalore

The three day festival of Diwali just ended. This is a HUGE celebration commemorating the return of Lord Ram to India after defeating the demon Ravana who had kidnapped his wife Sita. To celebrate the return of one of the most important Gods in the Hindu religion people have big family celebrations, exchange gifts, and enjoy fireworks.

Before I talk about the fireworks I just have to say how cool it was to celebrate this holiday at the house of several Target ex-pats and meet people from India, Canada, Serbia, Hong Kong, and England.

Fireworks. Exorcise any notion of the 4th of July fireworks from your mind (unless you are my family, the stuff we light off would fit right in as would the ceremonial burning of the Christmas trees). Fireworks in Bangalore, or ‘crackers’ are an entirely different experience. The best analogy, and I know it is good onebecause every ex-pat I’ve talked to has independently arrived at the same analogy, is the first night of the ‘shock and awe’ campaign over Baghdad. Constant flashes of light, explosions, skyrockets, and mortars erupted seemingly from every house, street corner, and roof top.

It was amazing in so many ways; amazingly beautiful, amazingly loud, amazingly fun and amazingly scary all at once. Beautiful because of the pure randomness and volume of fireworks. Loud because they don’t mess around here with the toys we call firecrackers. Here a firecracker is like an M-80 (these are illegal just about everywhere in the US). String a couple dozen M-80s together, ignite around 100,000 of these strings over the course of three days and you get the idea. My brother-in-law once procured a ¼ stick of dynamite (don’t know where and don’t care) one 4th of July. I thought this was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen on the 4th of July. I have a distinct pyro-streak in me. Dirt 20 feet and it actually left a small crater when it blew. Bear in mind that this is in rural WI where the nearest neighbor is ¼ mile away. Sorry to tell you this Aaron but your ¼ stick of dynamite would get its little explosive a-- kicked by the fireworks here. Which brings me to the scary part; there isn’t a quarter mile between houses here, more like 3 feet.

Many houses have roof top decks. That is where a lot of the fireworks are launched from. These fireworks, big, explosive, and loud are not made with the same quality control as you are used to. It is very common for one to shoot out the side of the launch tube as I found out first-hand. Whatever is in the way is going to be Baghdad to the firework’s F117A Stealth Fighter. This could be a house, tree, or you so on Diwali laugh with family, new and old friends, eat and drink until late into the night and don’t turn your back when the fireworks are being lit.