3 MONTH ANNIVERSARY!!! or PEOPLE HAVE ISSUES

So I was going to post this yesterday, which was actually the anniversary date-thing, but I forgot. I typed it out, and everything, and then logged in to WP and then just felt too lazy to copy-paste the whole thing here. I have no other excuse.

So today my blog complete 3 months of existence!!! I thought I should do something special for today, since I’ve completely ignored all other “birthdays” of this thing, but I suck at doing anything special, so I’m going to be pleased that I remembered this and move on.

Nope. But if you’re me, you should know that already.

People have issues (notice the amazingly smooth segue). Real issues.

Yesterday, I wanted an excuse to not be studying so I decided to take my dog out for a walk earlier than usual. By earlier, I mean it wasn’t completely dark outside so I could see what was going on around me quite clearly. Big mistake.

Just as I walked out the gate, I saw three people laughing so loudly that my big, brave dog decided they were planning to eat him and tried his best to run away from them. Or maybe he just needed to pee real bad and didn’t appreciate me taking my time to glare at the three random strangers who were actually within their rights to be laughing freely in a public space.

I finally conceded and followed him, and had gone no more than ten feet ahead when one of the three hyenas decided it would be hilarious to cycle extremely close to the footpath on which I was walking while ringing her bell constantly and laughing horribly loudly.

Ignoring her and trying my best to stop my dog from jumping on her cycle , I was walking ahead when suddenly, she overtook us, screamed while hysterically laughing, got down from her bicycle, picked it up, threw it back on the ground and ran back towards her “friends (?)”, still screaming and laughing. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. There was a bicycle lying there in the middle of the road, people were trying their best to not crush it beneath their cars, everybody was being inconvenienced by that stupid girl, and my dog was pulling at his leash because there was a hot female Labrador a few feet away from him staring at the scene as well.

I did my best to tell Mikey that inter-breed mating wouldn’t be allowed in my family, and he shouldn’t be able to want to do it since his “family jewels” have been mercilessly snipped off years ago because of my sister and her sadistic boyfriend, but he was in love and didn’t want to listen to me, so I decided to move and not have a law suit filed against my dog for indecent behavior by the snooty looking bitch (Get it? Because it was a female dog? I crack myself up).

An hour or so later, as I was returning (or being pulled by Mikey because he had apparently had enough of the walk already), the damned cycle was still fucking lying there, owner less. People were still honking and glaring at it as if it was suddenly going to turn into a sentient being and ride itself off the middle of the freaking road (Spoiler :It didn’t. Probably). I would’ve picked it up, really, but I was busy controlling my dog, so I couldn’t. Otherwise I would’ve totally done it. Yup.

But really, who does that? Who screams and throws things around in the middle of the road and leaves them there for hours? What is wrong with people?

Either her cycle got stolen later, or she finally got over whatever she was high on, because it wasn’t there after a couple of hours. I hope it got stolen though.

Now that I read this, I am thinking of never doing a “special” post again, I fail massively at it.

Happy Diwali! And I hope you don’t die.

So in some places, people are putting on scary decorations and cobwebs and frightening (supposedly) costumes and asking other people for candy and stuff…isn’t that what you do? I dunno. I’ve only seen that stuff in movies and once in real life when I saw a slightly drunken Jack Sparrow with drunken girl pirates that looked a lot like girl pirates from One Piece. Anyway, I don’t celebrate Halloween because India doesn’t get Halloween.

Give away stuff with nothing in return?

Let strangers knock on your door without glaring them to death?

Wasting time in having fun when you could be studying medicine/engineering/architecture and moving out of the country?

It would be a nightmare for most people I’m sure. But we do celebrate a very important festival this month, and that’s Diwali.

Now there’s not a lot of festivals in India that don’t involve grown ups yelling at children to stay quiet and in a corner, there’s just Holi and Diwali that I can think of and that kite flying holiday, so I am very fond of this time of the year.

Yes I need to clean my room table, but that’s a small price to pay. I get so much food everywhere I go and everyone’s in a mostly good mood and everything’s bright and cheerful and I get soo much money.

It’s awesome. And as a kid, another exciting thing was the whole firecracker tradition. I never liked loud ones, but the fuljhadis and anars and chakras were really cool. It was one of the few times that I didn’t absolutely hate everyone outside of my family. For a few hours. The rockets are wonderful as well, but they’ve never worked for me, so we have a love hate relationship. I love them. They laugh at me as they fizzle out and fall down after halfheartedly going up a few feet. That might have something to do with me being a giant wimp and barely touching the wick with the agarbatti (does anybody use anything else to light these types of crackers?)

Obviously, I can no longer enjoy these simple pleasures. The past few years, every-time we had more than 3 days off, we used to go to some forest and live like hermits, away from cell phone and internet coverage, and away from the poisonous fumes of the crackers. Last year however, we were able to stay home for the festival, and we were very excited to finally be able to play with fire again after so long. So when we decided to crush our consciences and go firecracker shopping, light shopping, other stuff shopping and things people do before festivals. I found a few strange things

1. We didn’t know what crackers to buy. Indian firecracker (henceforth referred to as FC) companies have no knowledge of copyright or useless stuff like that, or photoshop for that matter. I saw several pictures of Emily Vancamp, Shakira, Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon and surprisingly enough, Betty White on boxes of FCs. Many of them had the © mark right there in front of the box, sitting there without a care in the world.

2. If a box says there’s going to be one type of FC in it, it doesn’t necessarily have that FC in it. I don’t understand this marketing strategy, but I guess they know better than to go for building trust and confidence in their customers.

3. Safety is never an issue. Because it doesn’t exist. One shop we went to (by shop I mean a shack hastily built up to last through the Diwali week) had nice, fiery lamps burning away happily next to a somber looking stack of uncovered FCs. Nobody saw any problem with that.

4. Customer is always wrong. This actually happened this year, today. My mom went out to buy a string of lights because our last year’s works perfectly fine and all of us are horrible at handling money. When she specifically asked for a plain string without flashy colors, the guy told her she didn’t understand and that it was Diwali and it would look stupid if she had a plain lighting arrangement. When my mom insisted on the plain lights, he gave her a look that plainly said he didn’t think she was too bright and told the shop boy to pick the multi-colored ones after showing mom how pressing a button makes them go all shiny and colorful, slowly.

5. So apparently, electrical connectors are classified as male and female. Quite ingenious actually, but imagine my surprise when I asked for a connector with ‘holes’ (because I had no idea what to call them) and she yelled at the shop boy to give me a female.

“I’m getting a girl? What?” I didn’t get a girl. Thankfully.

In general, people were very upset with my entire family because we were some of the most unenthusiastic, non–jumpy, single colored family apparently, to ever exist. I’m pretty sure I heard an old woman telling some other old woman about the youth of today and how we have no respect for traditions. Thanks old woman. I didn’t hear that at all.

But unfortunately, I realized that we can no longer enjoy polluting the environment with more smoke and dust and explosive powder. Because after I grew up, I developed something known as a HAC or Horribly Annoying Conscience and that HAC does not let me enjoy polluting stuff. At all. I feel guilty when people around me go around bursting FCs. And since I was never a fan of loud sounds (unless those sounds are coming from my headphones), I don’t think I’m missing out. The other and more effective reason is my dog.

See, if we’d just told people that we actually give a fuck about the environment, we would be laughed at, dragged to the center of the FC bursting group and forced to light the most polluting, loudest FC they could get their hands on to punish us for uttering such blasphemous words. Do we not know that bursting FC’s during Diwali has been going on since time immemorial (not true since FCs are a Chinese invention) and that by not increasing the possibility of burning the entire area to the ground, we are dishonoring our traditions? We wouldn’t have had much of a choice in that.

But now that we have a dog, we can in fact go around telling people to stop. It’s a genuine reason and that reason is that FCs hurt my ears like hell and everyone seems unanimous on the point that my senses have dulled to the point of non-existence due to the internet (it’s always the internet). If my dull ears hurt, my dog’s ears must be figuratively exploding. It’s horrible to watch him cuddle up against mom and force us all into one room so that he can keep an eye on all of us at once.

So I no longer use FCs and neither can people around me, and five years down the line when everyone’s gasping for oxygen and dying, the air around my house will still be pure and breathable.

And I hope that the air around your house or wherever you live will also be breathable. Firecrackers aren’t funny to dogs and cats, many of which die during Diwali because of the noise and smoke. Birds also have heart attacks and die. In general, a beautiful festival ends up with having to sweep the bodies of many creatures off the roads to make way for the next night’s victims.

Happy Diwali!!

And a smoke free one. 🙂