Diwali is one of the biggest festivals of Bharat. Whole country was lit up and everyone was in a juvenile mood. The enthusiasm and excitement with which it is celebrated is unmatched and exorbitant. And why not? After all in this land of festivals there is more than one reason to celebrate this festival. In different parts of the country the festival is celebrated in a unique way, owing to a unique reason (but am not here to discuss the plethora of history and mythology associated with it, like any other Bharatiya festival). But there is one common thing which we all come across during the festival (rather it is after the festival) and that is the question “how was your Diwali?”
This is a common question which we all hear from our friends, relatives and acquaintances when we meet them for the first time after the completion of this one of the most celebrated festival. Now this is one question which has the potential to irritate people to the heights. As soon you meet someone (face to face, on telephone, while orkutting or chatting) sooner or later you are bound to face it. And when someone asks you this question don’t you feel “What the heck? How do you expect it to be? Off course good! Or are you expecting me to come up with some terribly pathetic and saddening news in response to this terribly pathetic sadist kind of question?” well I do sometime. Especially when you have just answered it to a person (with whom you don’t have anything else to talk about) and as soon as you are done with one, the next good for nothing fella
(in terms of topic of a talk) is BANG on the target.
Like there are numerous reasons to celebrate this festival, different people have different and very interesting answer to this question. So this post is about few of those answers which I received in response to this question.
First of all let me make it clear, that although I find this question a little irritating, but still because anyone and almost everyone asks this question so, even I tend to ask “How was your Diwali?” just out of habit or spontaneity.
Now the first response which is very common and the most boring of them all is the one I have already talked about, i.e. a short and precise “good”. Now to this pathetic question this is an equally pathetic answer. Primarily for two reasons, first that it is very much obvious that the festival must have been good. This is something which we already know, tell us something which we don’t. Secondly short and precise answers like ‘good, bad, yes, no etc.’ Do not leave much scope for continuing the conversation. So this shows that how little interested the other person is (in you or in this question of yours, don’t know exactly).
Another common answer which we hear is from a special group of people. These people most of the times sound like fed up with their lives. Or they do not find anything on the face of this earth interesting enough to show some enthusiasm about (especially, if this thing has happened before also in their lives) i.e. they are essentially “First-one-timers”. Only new things are interesting for them and that too only for the first time. So the peculiar answer which these people gives is something like, “nothing new yaar”, or “as always, same old Diwali dude” or even “what’s to celebrate? It was as boring as last year and year before and year before.”
The third category of response is by and large what we can call as “normal”. The response is some what like, “It was good, we had lots of fun” followed by a little description of how the person celebrated? And for almost all cases this description is more or less same (unless your friend’s family performs some out of the blue rituals to mark the festival). But some times we come to hear something new. Like for example, one of my friends apart from Rangoli makes ‘Gel Candles’. Another said, “Karna kya tha? Sara din logon se milna julna, raat ko gifts dekhna aur alag-alag tarah ki mithai khana” (What to do? Meet people for whole day, then checkout the gifts at night and checking out different types of sweets). Now this is one of the most honest and carefree answer I got to hear. But then there is another very unique and honest answer. It was from a friend whose father owns a sweet shop. He said “Arrey yaar, main toh do din se dabe (boxes of sweets) bana raha hoon” (Dude I am making sweet boxes for the last two days).
So this is what we get in response to a question like this. If you by any chance, heard some unique answer to this question, then do let me know. By the way “How was your Diwali?”
