Today is Diwalli (Dee-val-ee). It's a huge holiday here. Like Christmas in the USA. People give gifts and employers give an annual bonus, usually equal to two months pay. Oh yeah... and there are fireworks! Fireworks in India are insane. Technically, there seems to be a limit to how large a fire-cracker can be. But it's based on noise pollution laws, not any sort of energy, powder charge, or anything like that. The "M80" or "Cherry Bomb" type devices are known by the name "A-Bomb" or "H-Bomb" here, if that is any indication of how powerful they are. They are hand-blower-offers, if I have ever seen one. "Two Inch" firecrackers are still available here as well. (IMHO, two inch fire crackers are the only proper fire cracker to begin with... unfortunately, they are considered too dangerous in the States.) Of course, I could not resist participating in the festivities! On the way back to AV we stopped at one of the numerous fireworks stands and picked up some stuff. I didn't go for any of the sparkly stuff. Only things that explode. My only photographic proof is a single movie shot by Michael of some of the crackers going off. Excuse the shakiness. He said the first cracker scared him so much he flinched. The sound on the video can't do the sound of these things justice. They are vastly more loud than the wimpy crackers in the USA. I also set off a few "A-Bombs". There is no video because Michael was too busy covering his ears to shoot a movie! (They are freaking loud)
The particular type of A-Bomb I got was called the "King of King" and for what ever reason features Bruce Lee on the cover:
Along with the obvious Hindu inspired names and images for certain fireworks i.e. Lakshmi Bombs, Vishnu, etc, I noticed surprising number of the boxes featured male and (mostly) female western actors. I doubt the images were licensed. Anyway, it was really weird. I mean, what do Britney Speers and Sarah Michelle Geller have to do with Diwalli?
In the evening the people at Mitra, the hostel where I'm now staying, also set off some rockets and sparkly fireworks.
Overall, the quality of Indian fireworks is less than that of the Chinese fireworks we typically get in the USA. For example, not a single one of the rockets we fired off at Mitra functioned close to the same. One even exploded after only flying up about 6 feet. There were tons of duds and "fizzlers" in the strings of crackers and the A-Bombs I set off were all different in power. (None of them were "weak" but some of them were frighteningly more powerful than the rest!) One of them dudded out... what do you do with a dud A-Bomb? I just moved my whole "stage" area to a different place. There was no way I was getting close to that thing!
All the fireworks felt like a celebration of my return to Auroville. I haven't had that much fun with fireworks since I was a pre-teen.
As far as my new accommodations, I have to say that Mitra is pretty great. 110 Rupees per day and you get "breakfast" (Which really is nothing but whole wheat bread and tea) and Dinner. OK. SO the food isn't great. But you gotta keep in mind that 110 Rupees is like $2.50 a day. The accommodations are basic. A room and a shared bath/lav. But it's clean and the rooms are nice. I lucked out and I'm sharing what would normally be a dorm room for 6 people with just one other person (Michael). We have tons of space. It's great.
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