Diwali Fire Crackers

I always love visiting Prakash's house. One of the reasons is his book shelves. He has a passion to buy books and one can find many books on different subjects there.

Today again I was just browsing the new comers on the shelf while Prakash was helping his mother in some house hold work. Suddenly I found one book; it was on Mind Mapping, which was labeled "Diwali Crackers 2005".

"Hey Prakash!”, I asked, "what is this Diwali Crackers label doing on this book?"
He was not listening, I assumed as there was no answer to my question. I decided to ask the question when he will be back.

One more book again I found same label "Diwali Crackers 2004". Now I could not stop myself but to search Prakash, and ask him to stop whatever he was doing and answer me first.

I located Prakash in the house and asked again "hey I found two books in your shelf labeled 'Diwali Cracker'".
"There are many" said he" you will find one per year since my childhood."

I just saw towards him as if I am ready, to listen, the whole story. I was assuming there is a story behind this labeling and Prakash took the clue and continued.

"I was fond of book from my childhood", he started "and like others I also used to get funds for buying fire crackers in Diwali festival. Somehow I was not having much interest, in fire crackers unlike all my brother and sisters. I used that money always to buy a good book of my interest and see all my brother and sisters playing with fire crackers for three days while I read that book for many years to come."

"Wow!", said I "but don't you think you missed the pleasure of fire crackers?" was my question after that.

"It never occurred to me that I am being deprived of fire crackers. Since I can buy books of my choice I always felt that playing with fire crackers is burning your money for a very trivial cause. I don’t say everybody should do this, but this is the way it happened all the way and now I have many books with the label Diwali Crackers with the respective year on it".

Today was my day to be amazed and appreciate a hobby worth noticing. I was sure I could not resist playing with crackers. This was a new dimension to the thinking process for me. Just to keep the discussion running I poked him”, so why do you buy sweets and new clothes, you can apply the same logic there also?"

"You are ridiculing me now, I know that, but see", started Prakash again”, you must agree that this is altogether a personal choice. Now when we buy sweets and clothes I feel they are needed. I could not avoid them. Here I try to think about what is absolutely necessary and then I come to conclusion that yes I can keep away with the crackers part of this celebration. This doesn't mean that I have never played with crackers. But spending hundreds of bucks on this luxury item is a no-no for me."

He had a point there and I never argued with him about it again. I started thinking about my hobbies and whether there is any hobby like this which is different than most people do.

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur