The Diwali Cracker Discoveries this time…

The Diwali Cracker Discoveries this time…

The recently concluded Diwali saw me return to the Diwali celebrations scene with the gang again after an absence last year. This year’s celebrations saw substantially more participation on account of some new entrants.

One thing heartening to note about crackers this time is that they came with “No Child Labour Employed” printed across them. But this time, I saw brands that I had never ever before seen in my life. Standard Fireworks were no where to be seen, while KRS and Navarathna fireworks seemed to be very prominent. And this particular KRS brand has sub-brands like Calf Brand and the Sheep Brand. While I was in the process of using the product called Aero Dance, I also noted that the company provides additional specifications of this cracker like Original Name: Shell, Class 7, Sub-Class 3. I was under the impression that only navy ships, planes and missiles had a classification system like this. This goes to show how our firework companies have reached a new level of sophistication and they probably have a new database system as well.

While the packaging is very professional these days, the names of the products are extremely hilarious. The Red Gangster cracker had Amitabh Bacchhan, Rajnikanth and Kiera Knightly on it. The Lazer Show (note the spelling of lazer) had extremely suggestive and provocative pictures from a movie, whose actors I don’t recognize. And then there was the Pearl Hunt fire cracker, which had the Pirates of the Caribbean pictures all over it. The Tamil actress Asin also made her presence felt on one of the crackers. As mentioned earlier, Rajnikanth was a standard feature on all of them. The celebration ended with a lousy fancy cracker called Jukebox 100 which looks like a car battery and which is supposed to fire around 100 small rockets at will in all directions making a rather irritating noise while doing so. To the best of my knowledge, only 30 or so of them fired in ALL possible directions that left people scampering for cover. The jukebox 100 package also mentioned that this product was the pinnacle of the company’s innovation. Somehow, I do not happen to think so.

Lastly, the company is also careful enough to inform the prospective user that for best results crackers should be lit at night only :-)