Celebrations

India has been a land of festivities, of colors, of sounds, of love, of joy, of good and the bad and what not. For a person, who belongs to a family, which has essentially been an amalgamation of culture in itself, I have developed my opinions on celebrations, its reasons, its poignance and its consequences.

Just to affirm, here I am not  dealing with "who celebrates without reason" but "who celebrates on almost anything they can". We, the Indians. When you talk about just another reason, you can add in the list anything but it will still be a reason to celebrate.

I have my hybrid roots from  Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, both known for their cultural richness and festive moods. I almost always manage to locate a mithai ka dabba in my refrigerator and honestly I am not apprehensive about these unless one of my cousins decides to throw a theme party to celebrate his break up! It is indeed ironical that we still have so much of mishaps happening around while we talk about India being a land of celebrations.

There are but certain things that are intriguing, the stories, the reasons Indians have behind each festival. They amaze me not by their out of the world characters but their pompous display of a judgemental mentality. Most of us, we are so pre-occupied with the arrangemnts and frolic that we never bother to get into the reason why we are celebrating or what for. 

True, that joyous times give us a pleasant break from our monotonous schedules but won't you bother know what exactly were you celebrating? Was it the death of an evil you celebrated or was it the rise of power? Was it only sacrifice to the almighty or did you fast for a month to re-realise the beauty of what you have? Do you really know why we dedicate days? To mothers, to dear ones? And do you know why you celebrate love? Why the string tied onto your brother's wrist matters so much in the Indian culture? Delve into these in your leisure, with pleasure and you will come up with better reasons to celebrate if not more.

We, what harm can we cause to anyone by celebrating. I feel, it's something amazing we have, that we can find out any thing under the sun and still make it worthy enough to be celebrated for! If not by ripping people by demanding donations, I feel there is no harm in doing it the Indian way. Eat, pray and celebrate!

Sudeshna