Noisy crackers are objected to by crackpot environmentalists who see pollution everywhere and deny that life on this planet is about joy and its pursuit. Varuna tells Bhrigu in the Taittriya Upanishad that the core of being human is not about the fact that we eat or that we breathe or that we think, but that we have the capacity for ananda. And what can give more ananda than a series of burning flower-pots followed by a series of red crackers going off and assaulting the ears. Karl Marx or Noam Chomsky will doubtless remain unimpressed. But P.G. Wodehouse and Walt Disney (infinitely more important and intelligent personages than Marx or Chomsky) would have agreed emphatically with Varuna and urged us to “go for it”. When crackers accidentally burn down country houses, it tells you what country houses are really meant for!

Ananda needs to be pursued individually and collectively. Ananda is to be underpinned by prosperity that Lakshmi blesses us with. Ananda is to be shared and distributed especially to those who live around us and who have the capacity to help or harm us. Ananda in festive times should be characterised by staking our hopes on a roll of the die. Ananda propels us towards lights, especially in our power-cut-ridden, grimy, socialist cities. Ananda must be noisy, rejecting at least at this time the hushed tones of patronising kill-joys. Let us learn to celebrate with wholehearted vim and gusto our wonderful traditions of gambling, baksheesh, lights and deafening noise!

... contd.