Light up our potters' lives too this Diwali

The likelihood of acute power shortages due to non-availability of coal for most thermal power stations in the near future should temper Diwali purchases. Of late, more and more festival-related buys, particularly for Diwali, have become dependent on non-biodegradable materials and non-renewable energy sources, whether they are decorations, appliances, gadgets or vehicles. Even oil lamps and diyas have been replaced by twinkling fairy lights or long lines of incandescent bulbs, perhaps for convenience as well as for conspicuousness. If there are power outages on the big night this year or in the ones that follow, the god and goddess of prosperity may skip entire swathes of the country unless everyone has inverters or generators — meaning more use of fossil fuels — to ensure a bright welcome.

At a time when the rupee is hitting an all-time low and inflation is on the rise, the one thing most households surely would not want is to be blacked out of divine blessings of munificence for the months ahead. The obvious answer is to go back to the good old days of using terracotta and a very renewable energy source: ghee or cooking oil rather than coal or crude.

Potters have been bemoaning the replacement of their traditional terracotta wares with metal, plastic or even electricitydriven substitutes for Diwali, a corollary to the clay kulhar being replaced by plastic cups at countless railway stations and the matka by plastic containers in sweet shops. An environmentconscious, back-to-basics move by revellers would not only give potters a new reason to keep their craft alive, purchasers could also garner good karma for using biodegradable products, thereby reducing the detritus of paper, plastic and metal that usually mark Diwali and other raucous celebrations.