Tag: fireworks

The Stars Shine On

It was the 4th of July. The 250th anniversary. While the younger ones braved the crowds and went to the city to watch fireworks, we stayed away from the crowds and went to see the fireworks nearby in the residential neighborhoods instead.

We were high spirited after a fantastic dinner topped with ice-cream – sugar high as it were. That’s why you may or may not have found us slightly dizzy chanting the Pledge of Allegiance as the stars shone down on us – maybe from the fluttering flag or the skies above. Who knows?

We found a beautiful park after driving around looking for fireworks . It turned out to be one of those places folks like to give fancy names like ‘Cultural icon’.

Zoetropes 

The son keeps talking about zoetropes. I never knew what they were. “They are cool!” I agreed after he showed me what zoetropes were. Much like kaleidoscopes – tricky to get right and innately interesting once you do.

The son has always liked animation, so he has been babbling on about the zoetropes for a while now. I suspect it has to do with the ice cream store nearby, rather than the zoetropes themselves. Nevertheless, we were properly enthused after an evening admiring fireworks from the distance (fireworks aren’t allowed in our city, but the neighboring city goes nuts every year, and we get to watch).

Fireworks always brings the magic or the yearning for magic in us. So, we went looking for the zoetropes – animated films captured magic, didn’t they? After all, this was one of 1st places in which Hollywood would’ve been had it not been for the city of angels taking it on instead. We spun the zoetropes admiring the initial attempts at animation.

Really, human beings are marvelous; I don’t know whether any other species writes draws and paints the way we do! I thought of all the beautiful murals on buildings in San Francisco, so many underground passes and bridges with graffiti on them (aspiring to be art in some cases, but good in other cases).

After an evening of popping and flashing fireworks, and a set of spinning zoetropes, I felt a little dizzy, and steadied myself looking up at the stars.

The Stars Shine Down

It was a beautiful evening. The stars do shine down with an exaggerated brilliance after the artificial brilliance of the fireworks, don’t they? The spinning must be the zoetrope-effect, but it made for a Starry Night feeling.

After some time, we bought our gaze down towards the American flag fluttering in the breeze and felt a sense that in time all will be well. We just need to keep the magic of life alive. The stars shine on. The flag flutters on. America goes on. 

It was time to chant the Pledge of Allegiance and we did just that. Beautiful evenings come in various forms. As we headed home afterwards – flushed with fireworks, zinging after the zoetropes, spinning stars, fluttering flags etc, we were filled with hope. 

Exploring Deepavali Through The Firework Maker’s Daughter

I glanced around me – it was Deepavali, and all of us children, parents, and grandparents at the  party, looked delighted. Who wouldn’t be? Many of us were clutching sparklers, and watching the tiny stars produced by them in awe. The beautiful fountain pot spouted its joy towards the world a few feet away, and the oohs-and-aaahs were enough to melt hearts. Deepavali fireworks, especially in the US, are not exactly spectacular, but it is joyful all the same. 

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Watching fireworks has always been magical. The little sparks ignite something else altogether in our spirits.  Watching everyone around me, I could well imagine the children of ancient China watching in wonder as the first gunpowder produced magical effects. Or the hobbits as they all watched Gandalf’s spectacular fireworks in Hobbiton. Every time we go to DisneyLand, waiting for the fireworks in the cold, with thousands of people, it is magical. 

I was so glad to have an equally delightful book  to read that week-end, The Firework Maker’s Daughter – By Philip Pullman.

The Firework Maker’s Daughter – By Philip Pullman

A delightful tale of adventure, replete with a plucky heroine (Lila), a hero (Chulak) with gumption, and a talking elephant (Hamlet, who is in love with the elephant at the zoo, named Frangipani). 

In the Firework Maker’s Daughter, the firework maker, Lalchand’s daughter, Lila, wants more than anything to become a fireworks maker. At a young age, Lila invented Tumbling Demons & Shimmering Coins.

“My father won’t tell me the final secret of fireworks-making, “ said Lila. “I’ve learned all there is to know about flyaway powder and thunder grains, and scorpion oil and spark repellant, and glimmer juice and salts-of-shadow, but there’s something else I need to know, and he won’t tell me.” 

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But of course, the poor girl is not allowed to become a firework maker, for her father intends to get her married off. So, with the help of the white, talking elephant, Hamlet and his keeper, Chulak, she takes off to find the secrets of firework making all the same.

It is a whimsical book, and the descriptions of the fireworks in the end makes for a marvelous read.

If only the joys of learning to do these things (like making fireworks), were still available to us, instead of being locked behind factory doors, how wonderful it would be.  As I remembered all the different types of fireworks – the ones that burst into a thousand patterns in the sky, the ones that take their time like a rocket lift-off, the spinning chakras, the little pops of bursting noises, the ‘Lakshmi bombs’ ( the loud bombs), and the serial-wallahs,(the strings of explosive that went off for minutes at a time) – the imagination took off with the fireworks too.  How could it not? How inventive these firework makers must be.

I sat down willing to write about the marvelous joys of fireworks, but came up wanting. How can you capture the soaring of the heart in words? How can show  feel a definite lifting of the spirits when only you can feel it?