27th November 2012

Outsourcing Diwali pains... and joys

My son can't fly a kite and unless he is really determined, the chances are slim that he will ever learn it. As a kid, we started flying kites at least a month before the Independence Day and that gave enough time to young kids to practice their skills. Now we do it only on the 15th of August, not a day before or after. With just one day an year, chances are Manu will give up sooner than later.

The same is the case with Diwali. While we operated on modest budgets, we used to start with our fireworks much before Diwali. A few "bijli bombs" or a couple of rolls of crackers or something like that would be our source of joy every evening. Now that is also limited to just on Diwali.

Coming to outsourcing - the heading of this post, one thing that was an integral part of every boy's growing up years was making Diwali lights. Once again, weeks before Diwali, electric stores would stock small light bulbs and shades which the kids would buy and string them together using wires. Those were some interesting diwali lights with a serial connection so if one bulb blows out, the entire string would go off. Manually checking each bulb to spot the blown one using a tester and occasional electric shocks were part of every evening. To prevent the bulbs from blowing up, we used "master bulb" in the string. The master bulb had a circuit that breaks when it gets hot and connects once it cools and that gave the on-off-on effect to our strings. Sometimes we used "starters" that are used fluorescent tube lights which would give the string a flickering effect.

Now we don't have to waste time trying to fix the lights and we don't get electric shocks either while doing it. Now we buy inexpensive, made in China lights with a circuit controlling the sequence/patterns of lighting. And we no longer have the same affection for our light strings which made us get them out two weeks before Diwali, fix them and put them up.

It's no longer a festivity, it's a chore.

This image is from a collection of Diwali images, check out others here.

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