Diwali is an occasion when we celebrate victory over defeat, light over darkness, awareness over ignorance. On this auspicious day, I join my family and friends, to celebrate life with happiness, joy and peace.

When I look back in retrospect, I remember one incident which took place some years ago. On the day of the festival after all our rituals and prayers were over, all my cousins and I asked our elders for permission to burst crackers. This was the most awaited part of the day for us.

With a lot of excitement in anticipation of the fun of bursting crackers, we ran towards the compound of our residential complex. The entire compound was decorated with lights, lanterns and rangolis. We clicked a few photographs and started bursting firecrackers. Two of my elder cousins were carrying a big jute bag filled with crackers. There were sparklers, garlands, pencil crackers, snakes, rockets and various other kinds.  The colourful sparklers which were sparking with red and green light looked fascinating.

After one packet of the crackers was consumed, my brother fetched another type of cracker which none of us had burst earlier. It was linear in shape with a flat end and was supposed to go straight up to the sky once it was ignited. So, my brother lit the cracker but, unfortunately, instead of going straight up the cracker moved with a tilt towards the ground and it landed where my sister and I were standing and burnt our feet. The cracker moved with such a speed that we could not even move away to save ourselves. It seemed as if it happened within a fraction of a second.

However, we were taken home by our senior cousins and were taken care of by our tensed parents. After they applied medicine to our wounds, all the children were given a good scolding by our elders for being irresponsible. This definitely doused our enthusiasm for bursting firecrackers on Diwali night.