Diwali lights and frights

Diwali is the festival of lights, so this is peak season for Indian illuminations manufacturers everywhere. Delhi is lit up a hundred shades of neon, and it's clearly a mark of some pride as to who can get their house looking the glitziest. Mr and Mrs Mehandru are away, so my own house has been left in gloomy, unlit solitude among the neighbourhood's most impressive efforts:

Even the building sites are illuminated:

Their open frontages also provide handy places for the locals to enjoy the displays from of an evening. Any structure stable enough to support it is host to a gaggle of people gathered around a shared meal, looking out at the glittering city:

Of course, nowhere is more glittering than the temples - this is one just near Defence Colony market, which I almost ended up living just outside (it would have been pretty, but I think the early morning bells would probably have been a little bit more spirituality than I'm looking for):

Not all that long ago, Diwali must have been a serenely beautiful time to be in Delhi: the glow of candlelight, families gathered to celebrate together, a temporary lull to the clamour of daily life.

Then someone invented fireworks.

I have a confession to make: I really don't like fireworks. I don't mind them so much if they are a big, organised, large-scale display that look genuinely impressive and happen (a) rarely and (b) sufficiently far away not to scare the living crap out of me. Generally speaking these are the kind of fireworks I was brought up with. Anyone growing up in England in the 1980s was subjected to such a barrage of horror stories about the dangers of fireworks every October that most of us are too terrified to even touch one of the damn things. Fireworks, we have been thoroughly indoctrinated to believe, should only ever be lit at a distance of at least 10 metres from the crowd, who should be safely penned in by a magical rope (one assumes), by a responsible adult which (this is important) most of us will NEVER BE. Also, bonfires kill hedgehogs.

The point is, I come from a culture which may condone getting totally bladdered and vomiting in the streets, but which tends to frown on waving explosives around like toys or setting them up in the middle of the street without so much as a by-your-leave. Being of a sensitive disposition with regards to things that go bang in the first place, the result is that I really do not like fireworks going off willy-nilly in my vicinity.

I've long since learned that this is yet another thing that the English do not have in common with quite a lot of the world. Anyone who has spent New Year in the Netherlands may share my sense of bemusement that an otherwise eminently sensible people transform themselves, once a year, into a bunch of loons who think it's a hoot to lob firecrackers at total strangers in the street. My first experience of Dutch New Year was one of total terror in a heaving Amsterdam, when my friend Helen was nearly swamped by a crowd surge caused by someone randomly letting off a load of the things right in the middle of the packed Leidseplein. More recently the annual transformation of the lovely, graceful city of The Hague into a smoking war zone was a regular source of distress.

Delhi, though, is another level. Health and safety is not exactly top of people's concerns here in the first place, but the devil-may-care attitude to life and limb shown by Delhi drivers transformed my evening stroll (undertaken to bring you good people the above photos, I hope you are grateful) into something out of Saving Private Ryan (I exaggerate but a little), complete with flaming missiles, underfoot booby traps and unexpected explosions. The nadir was when, walking alongside a beautifully lit park, I was stopped in my tracks by a rolling cylinder flaming merrily at one end, which rattled gently across three feet in front of me. I had time to back up a further 10 feet or so when it went whooshing up into the air - had I carried on walking, it would basically have gone whooshing up into me.

Also, at least the Dutch New Year only lasts one night. The banging and crashing has been going on for the best part of a week now and I'm starting to get a little tired of the cacophony, particularly since yesterday my body conspired to give me a hellish migraine on top of it all (I really don't recommend having a migraine in Delhi during Diwali). Goodness only knows what the local animals are making of it all (come to think of it, the number of stray dogs around has gone down markedly in the last week).

So I've become a bit of a Diwali scrooge. Yes, the lights are pretty and it's lovely that everyone gives everyone gifts and that people actually get a bit of time off for a change. But enough of the banging, people. Please?