How frightening a thought it is to realise that its very much possible that soon our children would hear of our festivals only in their curriculum books and never get to enjoy them....... that our children would get sucked into all kinds of artificial source of entertainment out of sheer boredom and there is little we can do about it...if we dont act now!
Richa and myself was discussing this issue today morning and couldnt help feel sorry for our kids on one hand and get frustrated on the other at our changing social priorities.
The question here is can we do something to prevent this from happening atleast in Malibu Towne? Why is it that last year we celebrated Janmasthami with such fanfare at the Tower 5-6 portico but this year we didnt? Do you know the reason? Well it seems last year's volunteers (nothing to do with MEPL or MCRWA) were repriminded for having not made the effort of personally "SENDING" prasad to each household who contributed money!!!! Well, my question to all this narrow minded unfortunate literates is that....did you contribute for home delivery of prasad or to enjoy a festival???
We had a grand Diwali couple of years back but thereon the festival scene in Malibu has been bleak. Like one of our coresidents recently commented " bolne wale bahut hain par karne wale bahut kam" :)
I remember when we were small we used to look forward to all the festivals...be it Holi, Durga Puja, Janmasthami, Saraswati Pujo, Laxmi Puja, Ganesh Chaturthi Diwali, Christmas, Guru Gobind Singh's Birthday, Eid for the Kheer, 26th January (not a festival but a day to celebrate still), 15th August (not another holiday but a day to rejoice our independence...try and compare this day with 4th of July :)
But do you see that excitement in our kids (apart from the chance to burst crackers in Diwali?) Well, we can hardly blame them. Where is the exposure? To give you an example, I was pleasantly surprised on 15th August to hear drum rolls, group songs etc...only to realise its celebration of Independence day and that it is happening in Uniworld with much fanfare. What did we the elite Malibu Towners do? I felt ashamed of myself for having treated the day as yet another holiday.
Would like to make this outburst an opportunity to come together to make sure that we take some time out to celebrate our festivals before they lose their meaning behind the much hyped nonsensical Friendship Days, Valentine's Day which today's kids seem to prefer to celebrate.
To make a beginning, lets come together to celebrate Diwali. The scale and the grandeur doesnt matter ...lets put up something. Count Richa and myself in...if there are more of you who would like to join hands it could be fun.
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Ritu I don't think people in Malibu care for all this. You can see by the sheer strength of folks who contribute to the blog or even follow what is happening. It may be futile to compare ourselves with other more cohesive and progressive societies like Essel, Uniworld etc. I had personally asked so many people to join the Blog and write in but it seems like hardly anyone has the time or care, forget about coming together to celebrate festivals. I suggest we just plan something amongst us and go ahead to execute it from our end.
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