Essay on Diwali

“Teacher, will you cut marks if I write 600 words instead of 400?” Sridhar asked. The class looked up, unable to digest the oddity of the situation. Here, we were- barely able to write 50 words, and Sridhar had an opposite issue- a problem of plenty.

The week before Diwali was the mid-term school examination. The English paper had a predictable question- “Write a 400-word essay on Diwali”. It carried 20 marks.  20 marks was a lot of moolah- You could not treat it carelessly.

Miss Fernandes, the English teacher, smiled back at Sridhar. Her response was cryptic, “Yes, I will deduct marks if you overstretch to 600 words. But if it is slightly over 400, you need not worry.” Sridhar wore a sad-puppy face. He lamented, “I have already written 650 words. How can I reduce it to 400 now?”

The class chuckled at the teacher’s answer. Serves him right! In fact, for every word over 400, one mark should be deducted, so that Sridhar’s net tally would read in the negative! That would be just punishment for acting over-smart!

The rest of the class was struggling. How do you write 400 words on Diwali? What is there to write? Miss Fernandes had laid out the basic structure for any essay. She drilled the point ad nauseam. Any essay should have 3 parts- “introduction”, “body” and “conclusion”. While this break-up was simplistic, how do you generate content for each part?

You wrote the first few sentences quickly. For “introduction”, “Diwali is the festival of lights” was perfect. For “body”, “We bursted many crackers” was fine. For “conclusion”, “Diwali is my most favorite festival” nicely closed the topic.

You counted the words and found it was exactly 16! How do you inflate this to 400? It was impossible, as though asked to stretch chewing-gum in your mouth, to the end of the universe. To rub salt to the festering wound, here was Sridhar swallowing supplement papers by the dozen, writing 600 words, 1000 words, perhaps an entire Mahabharata on Diwali! Life was unfair.

Biting the end of the pen, you stared out of the window for inspiration. Suddenly, you remembered a brilliant point. “Diwali shows the victory of good over evil”. It sounded bombastic and philosophical. You felt 20 marks could be awarded for just that one sentence. Quickly, you made corrections and counted again, hoping the word-count would have grown by leaps and bounds to 400. No luck. The count read a measly 24.

You chewed more of the pen-head and stared out of the window. A sentence came to mind that gelled with any festival- “We wore new clothes, visited relatives and friends, and ate many tasty sweets like jaangri and baadusha!”

The clock was ticking in the examination hall. What more do you write? You tore your hair in desperation. May be, “we woke up at 4 am and did Ganga Snaanam”? It sounded silly. Moreover, it was doubtful if Miss Fernandes would comprehend such intricate detail.

Suddenly, an idea flashed- how about an enumeration of crackers? That would add weight to the essay. “We bursted many crackers- sparklers, Electric bomb, Laxmi bomb, atom bomb, snake-pellets, bufferfly, telephone, floor-chakra, hand-chakra, flowerpot, colored-match, rocket etc. etc.”

Only 10 more minutes left. What to write? A brainwave struck- “My neighbor got a ‘10,000-wala cracker’. The serial-cracker made noise like this- pat-pat-pat-dum pat-pat-pat-dum…” Carefully, you added enough “pat-pat-dum” so that the essay ended exactly at the 400^th word. Three-fourths of the full-scape paper was packed with the “pat-pat-dum” sound effects!

Between the last “pat” and “dum”, you added a few blank spaces intentionally. It recreated the atmosphere- how the serial-cracker exploded in a steady burst, but one lonesome cracker-finger was an outlier…and suddenly burst, minutes after all else was exhausted! You were delighted you could write 400 words and handed over the answer paper. Miss Fernandes would surely award full marks.

Back home, sister asked, “How was your English exam?” Confidently, I replied, “I aced it! Guess what? I wrote 400 words on Diwali”. “What did you write?” was the next question. “I wrote- we bursted so many crackers…” Sister interrupted, “Bursted is not even a word. It should be burst”. “Silly! I wrote bursted because it was about last Diwali!” Sister was insistent- “In the past also, it must be burst. The past tense of burst is burst”.  You wondered- why is sister so obsessed about English grammar? However, it seemed prudent to agree with sister and end the conversation- “Ok! Ok! I guess Miss Fernandes will deduct half-mark for my silly mistake! I will certainly score 19-and-a-half out of 20 for my essay!”