Deepavali Firecrackers - II

A million bijli's later, my dad introduced me to weird crackers... They cannot be called crackers, because they were never fun. I don't know, but my dad religiously buys these every year.

Have you heard of "Snake" ? That is probably the worst thing that ever came out of Sivakasi. This "Snake" is just a couple of tablets, that comes in a matchbox sized tiny box. It needs to be placed on the ground, and when lit, some dark gray colored shit comes out. It looks ugly if not yucky. No, it does not make any sound or create bright flashes. It comes for about a min or two and then it runs out. Maybe girls like to play with such stuff, you know they always like to play with soft and crappy things. Any ideas girls? Do you girls run around it and sing songs or some such?

The "cape" is the next in the list. Maaan! how lame can one make a pistol? These are tapes with tiny explosive material which blow on impact. It is usually inserted in a special pistol and it blows one by one, when the hammer hits the tape. Not only does this pistol not throw any projectile, it blows and burns the hand. Terrible design. I have no idea who thought this might be a good idea, and why people buy this. I don't think even girls play with this. But I found some use for this otherwise lame ass cracker. Since it blows under pressure, if you drop some of these under the legs of the chair, it startles people when they sit on it. Trust me, even with my level of innovation, it was pretty lame.

Enough of talking of lameness. There are some awesome cool crackers: they are so awesome that the cracker was banned from production. I think it defines awesome coolness! I don't think any of our generation people would have seen a "vengaaya vedi" which literally translates to "onion plosive". I guess it must have looked like an onion. The awesome thing about it is, it does not have a fuse: it is pressure triggered. If you throw this on a wall, it explodes on impact! How cool is that? I mean... wow! Unbelievable! That should have been so much fun! But I have never even seen one of these. Older people... any ideas?

Rockets are cool too. But the thing is, cool rockets are way too expensive. If there is a very special rocket, which explodes into 4 or 5 colors, it is like... I lite it, and boom... there goes my thousand bucks. But, I was lucky. Our neighbours used to spend a ton of money on rockets. I go to the terrace, and just lie down to watch the sky light up in a million sparks. They used to buy many kinds of rockets, some whistle, some have one big bang and radiates into a huge sphere of tiny bombs, each of which again explodes, giving a real time fractal effect. But there was one kind of rockets which are very different. It goes up very high and just explodes without spitting any fire. The explosion is so powerful that I would feel the shock in my stomach a moment later. It always kept reminding me of anti-aircraft missiles. That is what I call, a man's play.

It was so much fun just knowing about these, and then seeing them all over the city. I have no idea if my kids would like them. The least I could do is, buy the stuff for my kids, and use it myself ! :)