WITH LIGHT...THERE IS ALWAYS DARK

The age old tradition in every facet of our existence is highlighting the bright side of anything and subduing its dark one. We all vouch for an uber existence as full of malls, high end facilities, speeding cars and every other possible amenities. We enter malls full of pride and awe and refuse to acknowledge the shanties and "chor bazaars" around it. We all drive away with pride in our vehicles, " bigger the better" , being our motto and fail to see the roads and our fellow humans being choked alike. Living in anything less than a villa or mansion is way below ourselves and hence we turn a blind eye to the mode of procurement of land, agricultural or tribal..why should we give a damn! We drive and curse simultaneously on encountering bad roads and prefer to turn up our noses at the open drains or overflowing dumpsters. Sadly we must know that the waste is the "dark" side of the "bright" consumer goods.
Socially speaking, apartheid , caste discrimination like phenomena and the ever increasing anti social diaspora today is simply lack of giving them proper acknowledgement. Ignoring the "dark" skinned, the "dark" lives of those downstream in the social ladder , and more recently the rights of those who live in dark, inaccessible places and are taken to be absent from the country's scenario. All this has been the cause of uproars and violent rebellions ( armed Naxalism an important example) presently and through the ages.
The many stresses and woes of modern life are pinned upon the hectic schedules and cut-throat competition in society. No one ever wants to accept that the schedules got hectic due to our mismanagement, keeping the small yet important things in the dark, not taking them into account. And the darkness of population explosion still haunts us giving way to the omnipresent competition. Try and ignore that if you can! The stress buildup in everyone's life is inability to express ourselves completely at all times, the democracy which is so hypo-critic calls upon us to wear a "volte-face" and keep our true feelings bottled up in the dark. Shrinks hence proudly display themselves as our only light and hope , we get dazzled and go to them to vent out. However that superficial method is no way out and we know that. Scorning at and hence ignoring things in the dark can be disastrous. Many-a-times we also keep things in dark from our family, thinking it would bother them, not understanding the illumination that discussion would cause and it would ward away all our troubles.
Come Diwali and there is no distinction between day and night. The whole town gets decked up with almost-bridal jewels of light. Not surprisingly enough though, this light is very effectively able to mask the heat and toil of the firecracker factories. The loud laughs, cheers n gaiety mask out the noise of unwonted explosions. Even the stifling smoke emanating out gets an almost attractive shimmer to it. This is the dark that the brightest of all festivals in our country hides.

On a philosophical note  one can say that, the presence of light can only be sensed in the dark.The harmony or balance of our existence is essentially the balance between light and dark. Judging the things on the "darker side" of life as simply evil and bad is a very biased view of life. We must remember that as long as there is no negative scale, the positive cannot be judged against anything. A full moon night is as beautiful and as dangerous as a new moon night in any predator-inhabited jungle or with respect to high-tide phenomena in seas and oceans. Light and dark are two extremes of "the shades of grey" and represent the respective stoppages to the ever ongoing transition of existence, light being its Utopian and dark being its Dystopian version.However, the concept of light and dark is a perception based one, and we may be actually endorsing something dark without even knowing it (like moral policing or khap panchayat decisions). Life only in the light without any flicks of dark becomes perfect and boring, it is the dark imperfections which add excitement and the scope for betterment and progress in life. We all sure do love "happy endings" but please people, it is time to get the real picture around us and prevent the sad and "dark" endings before it is too late. The bright light around can be a very well illusion by which we should not be easily fooled and keep blissfully ignore the dark. 

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