Yes, you read it right, pestival. A glorious duration of 3 months that has so many “reasons to celebrate” spread around that it gets the “pest” in people out.
First, it is all those pests trying to sell stuff to you. You know, them ones in shopping malls and centres hawking “special sale only during this festival time” or “buy until you die (or are killed off by them pestering debt collectors, damn them!)”. Add a bit of religious twist to this(diwali, eid, christmas, pick your choice) and suddenly spending money on useless crap becomes the holiest exercise of the season. Its almost as if you will be condemned to the deepest circle of hell if you don’t buy our products! Going to a shopping mall becomes an exercise quite similar to being the only piece of meat in a desert with vultures circling all over you. Makes you remember of the time when presents would only be given on proper occasions like a birthday, not the 3rd day of the 5th week before Diwali or some such! Mother’s day was on her birthday, father’s day on his. But no, now every pestival and every day before and after it is an occasion that demands a gift be presented to those you love. Otherwise your love is as good as a straw hat in a thunderstorm.
Then there are the social pests. Them who want you to be part of their social circles and go over to their place for that special (lunch/dinner) on that <insert festival here> occasion because why not! Time for celebration they say! After all, its only once in a lifetime! Every year, on the same day. Still, one must oblige otherwise you risk being a social untouchable.
There’s also the pests who suddenly remember you the day of the said festival. More likely because they are so lazy that they simply do a “send all” on the greeting they have copy-pasted from another message, or simply type Happy <whatever> on facebook and hope everyone sees it. Only to make us all feel really special.
I hate festivals. I hate them because they make all these unwanted pests come out of their closets into the open world. I hate them because the way we celebrate them makes no sense. It is hypocritical to everything that festival stands for. Most festivals stand for victory of good over evil, or celebrating birth of a lord & saviour. Then shouldn’t we work towards such victories, or try to save someone from hunger or suffering on those days.
We will get so many chances in the next few months to do good. But we won’t. We will stay as the self-centered hypocritical bastards that we all are. Doing lip service to charity and good living, followed by doing lip service to the drinks of our choice.
So here’s wishing a Happy <insert festival name> to you and your family. We wish you joy and prosperity. Also, we’d like you to know that you aren’t important enough for us to have put any effort into either writing this boilerplated message or sent it to you in a manner slightly more personal. At least take solace in the fact that you’d be doing the same to countless others! So there!
P.S It is worthy to note that I stopped myself from using the f*** word at least 10 times in this short rant. Don’t know why I fucking bothered!