As I get older, I’m finding myself becoming more cynical. I’m sceptical about everything and am quick to assume hidden selfish motivation behind everything people do and say. I don’t want to be like that.
Just a little while ago, someone upstairs put up fairy lights and hung them so they drop into our balcony. My first reaction when the lights turned on, was, “Uh! There goes my sleep.”
There’s probably a very good reason someone put up lights half a year away from Diwali. A joyous occasion, no doubt. Shouldn’t a neighbour be happy for them? I checked my bitterness. Don’t be that person. After all, wouldn’t I want others to be happy for me, if there was something happy going on in my life?
I stepped into our balcony and looked up. The long strings of light, began a floor above. They were spaced evenly and spanned their balcony from top to bottom. Their home glowed beautifully.
The bunched up balls at the end of each string peeked into our balcony more casually and at varying lengths. The scrunched up, messy balls of lights were as pretty, if not, prettier, than the straight lines above. Our balcony was beautiful, too.
Musings of an eccentric mind 
2 replies on “Let There Be Light”
I think I’m becoming less cynical and more accepting towards people but the reverse towards institutions – which can bring me into conflict with people who are loyal to those institutions.
I’m old enough to see how the rise of neoliberalism and managerialism has drained our communities of their social capital and made people more competitive and less cooperative towards those they share a neighbourhood or workplace with.
It would be hypocritical for me to blame people for struggling to adapt to the social conditions they’re forced to live under as I regularly find myself taking ‘ethical shortcuts’ in response to difficult situations beyond my control.
Shanti, shanti Kasturika. Diwali or not, every day is a holy day and everything is the Goddess. It’s all infinitely beautiful and exactly as it should be.
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I like how you separate people from institutions/systems. If a system forces people to act a certain way, then we can’t really blame them. I’m going to keep that in mind. The key is to have more individual, one on one interactions than generic group messaging.
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