Long Weekend!!

Festivals, be it religious or regional, we, the people of India are always known to celebrate them in the grandest possible manner. People would go to the extent of planning their lives based on these festivals, like onathinuu grinder, pongalukku moped and new dress for the entire family for Ugadhi. Children would normally start celebrating these festivals, days before the actual festival day and thus spreading happiness and excitement among their family and friends.

In the recent years, we could see a different trend. The only thing which doesn't change is that we still start celebrating festivals 120 days in advance, thanks to the hue and cry in getting train tickets. Most of us don't get tickets and hence the festival day, when we used to play with our cousins and involve ourselves in heroic sports in villages is now a day to fight/curse our luck in getting a tatkal ticket for our return journey.Many people in Tamil Nadu sacrificed(thats how they call it) a greater part of Pongal celebrations last year on Jan 14th as they were slogging to get tickets booked on the opening day for Holi holidays in March. People now have to plan their travel for the harvest festival well before the seeds are sown in the field.

People have started forgetting why a particular festival is celebrated , in the above case, Holi. We only look at whether it is a Holiday and not if it is 'Holi' day. Our next focus after getting the required travel tickets is in knowing what movies are releasing for that festival both in cinemas and TV. Even if we are hearing the same voice crying out 'For the first time in Television or Prabanja tholai kaatchigalil mudhalmurayaga(India and world are already copyrighted with the voice :( ), we get excited. We get glued to the idiot box watching interviews of Tom,Dick and Harry on the festival days . I still remember one Diwali where there were no crackers in the evening as one of the channels was telecasting superstar movie. The crackers went off only during the half an hour news break in between.

We also see seasonal festivals being plucked from one part of the year and placed in some other parts for various reasons. We witness the same festival called by different names in different channels with some festivals still waiting to be accredited by few channels. But that doesn't matter as long as the channel telecasts how our favorite actress celebrates the festival.

In the midst of all these, festivals indeed matter for few private bus operarors and the alcohol industries. Both these sections get their maximum profit during festival times especially the alcohol sales scaling new peaks every festival. Looks like there will come a day, if not come already where we would have to stream a video in youtube to know what was Onam/Deepavali and how it was celebrated.After all, we the people who celebrate the festivals are seeing the festival holidays and weekends as ' looonng weekends ' and not a Pongal weekend or Holi weekend.