Fireworks during Diwali

As children, the only festival we looked forward to was Diwali. The first attraction was, and if I am not mistaken even today is, fireworks.
Actually Diwali is celebrated twenty days after Dussehara. But for us, Diwali always started as soon as Dussehara ended.

It all used to begin with bringing the catalogs for fireworks from the local store and bargaining for budget with our parents. The prices always doubled from the previous year. So, we always had to fight for an increase in our budget. Finally, after a lot of struggle and discussions, one fine evening, we would go and buy the fireworks.

The next challenge was to dry them under the Sun for a few hours a day, in order to get the best results. The more the fireworks are dried the better they fired. Every one of us would take turns to gaurd the fireworks from rain, and thieves who mostly would be the servant maid's children.

And the next task would be dividing the fireworks equally among all of us. This was the trickiest and the most controversial part, and mostly my dad used to head this meeting to avoid quarrels among us.
I and my sisters invariably, had to part with the less ‘dangerous’ share, stuff like ‘sparkles’ ‘bhuchakras’ , ‘snakes’, ‘onion bombs’, some ‘packet bombs’ , 'color match boxes' 'Ropes', 'Pencils', 'vishnu chakras', 'black snake tablets'. Besides these, both my brothers would get to fire the bombs and rockets too.

I do not know, if any one remembers the 'black snake tablets' , which gave out black pungent smoke and black suit when lit and made a permanent mark on the floor. My mother always hated those things as she had to clean the black suit, and scrub the marks which were all over the house.

Yet another interesting thing, I remember is the Telephone bomb; we had to tie a string from one pole to another running through the telephone bomb. When lit with fire it moved from one end to the other with sparkles. We enjoyed doing that over weekends before the Diwali.

One year we celebrated Diwali in our grandmother’s village. There , we did not had all the fireworks that we had in Hyderabad, but it was fun and we learnt new things.

The most common fireworks, which all the village children lit are ‘divitilu’; a cotton cloth dipped in oil was wound to a stick and lit with fire. Carrying these in their hands, the children made all sorts of acrobatics. Some even caused fire accidents, which were inevitable as most of the houses had thatched roofs.

In addition to the 'divitilu' , there were the ‘rolu rokallu’, the crude substitutes for bombs . Gunpowder in small quantities used to be placed between a small iron mortar and pestle and was tightly secured with two long iron wires. With the help of these two iron wires it was, then swung in the air, and struck with force to ground which made the gunpowder to blast releasing huge sound.

And, another beautiful fireworks which I enjoyed in my granmother's village was the ‘vennela madugulu’; these I think were made with sulfur and phosphorous , which were packed in tubes of several layers of paper. When one end was lit with fire, drops of sparkling hot stuff fell to the ground causing the visual effect of moon light falling to ground. One had to hold these high above the ground in order to get the best effect.

Most of the fireworks in the villages were made at home by the family members and were exchanged for some thing else.

Just wanted to remind you, all the fun and enjoyment we all had back in India.