Hampering my Diwali, writes Shweta Bachchan Nanda

I was sitting in my reading nook this afternoon, window ajar, and I felt it... the first timorous tickle of the winter. In a matter of days, it will gather courage and start invading our homes, seeping into the walls of the bathroom (always the first room in the house to catch a cold) and snake its way into the ducts and corners finally laying siege with such tenacity that it will turn our own beds hostile. 

Nature is winding down for the year, shedding its excess and slipping into sweet hibernation. In dramatic contrast to our environment, we, homo sapiens, seem to be waking up, not just that, we are hellbent on rousting and revelling (typical, we are never in tandem with nature and when not destroying it, are in violent opposition to it — we will never learn) An exhausting fortnight of the Navratras behind us, we are in full preparation for Diwali and the minor and major festivals that accompany it. And with the advent of Diwali, come the dreaded gift hampers! One has just about cleared out their closets and cabinets, only to have them, usurped by some of the most useless gift items known to man! 

We are three weeks shy of the big day, but some overzealous stranger — as a rule, the more unfamiliar the person, the larger and more ridiculous the hamper — has already dispatched their gifts for the season. The basket is unwieldy, gaudy, with its obligatory smatterings of dry fruits, diyas and something that has a vague resemblance to a candelabra but could just as easily be the spare part of a car! I have made the rookie mistake of unwrapping this eyesore on my bed and am now unable to divest my person or bed sheets of the most persistent glitter this side of the equator! 

Before the month is out, my dining room will be lined with various permutations and combinations of similar caskets all of no use to me whatsoever! How and why has this kind of gift-giving become a staple of our arguably biggest holiday? Why, for example, do the parties that indulge in this kind of gratuitous largesse just not put the money they spend — and trust me, it is a pretty bundle — to good use by giving to those who are truly in need? Isn’t that more in keeping with the spirit of the festivities? 

Surely the goddess of wealth, under whose auspices this is carried out, would approve of putting your money towards charity rather than carpet-bombing everyone in your address book, irrespective of when you last made contact, with those ubiquitous cans of Fox’s candy that lie forgotten till the summer months, by which time, they have turned into a congealed mass of plastic wrapper and pure sucrose and rendered largely inedible! 

So, while I break open my third box of Ferrero Rocher nimbly avoiding a glitter contagion, have a good hard think about it, and have a safe, but socially responsible Diwali.