greatest children's toy in the history of the world

The annual Diwali holiday ended about 5 days ago. Diwali is known as the "festival of lights," which is not so much a reference to peaceful, gently glowing oil lamps or candles (or to Hanukkah), but more to gaudy, multi-colored, dubiously wired decorative flashing mini lightbulbs and, most importantly, cheap and abundant fireworks that go off day and night for five days straight. And when I say "day and night," I mean literally sometimes starting at 6:45 a.m. and ending at 1:00 a.m. And not at some distant public park, I mean right outside your window for chrissake.

One good thing about the incessant fireworks is that they provide acid-flashback style enjoyment when paired with Robin's fabulous snowman hologram glasses. For those unfortunate enough never to have experienced these novelty optics, basically they are like 3-D specs you get in a box of cracker jacks, except instead of making things 3-D they make any bright point of light into a little snowman. We managed to capture this on digital "film":



Now imagine that, except on the fourth of July when you're seeing triple. We could hardly keep ourselves from wrenching the glasses off each other's faces during some of the more active fireworks displays.

Another benefit of the week-long pyrotechnics was the additional smoke and trash generated by the festivities. When Mumbaikers tell you that Diwali is problematic on account of its worsening the air quality so much, you know you're in for some carcinoriffic, cleansing breaths of delight. This is a city, after all, where half the year the current weather conditions are already described simply as "Smoke." If you could take a deep breath in the first place, you'd realize that this smells like trouble.

Also, the fire safety guidelines in India...aren't. All week we saw happy 4-year-olds brandishing Roman candles and the like right in front of our building and sometimes even in the lobby. People were launching rockets from the parking lots of various surrounding buildings. One night some embers landed in the foliage of our (22nd story) window ledge. Every morning the streets would be filled anew with firecracker-related detritus. This seemed a nuisance until the day when Robin and Alex discovered the following piece of discarded packaging:



I don't even know where to begin with the sheer excellence of this artifact. Perhaps with the pensive, chubby-cheeked two-year-old who seems to be thinking, "Hmmm, what haven't I blown up yet today? I know! My own head!" Or maybe the fiery flushing toilet bowl of glittery flames? Or the non sequiturial squirrel logo? The cautionary instructions, which I repeat here for the reader's convenience?

WARNING. FLAMMABLE. EMITS SHOWERS OF SPARKS AND REVOLVE ON THE GROUND. (...) LIGHT MOUTH WITH SPARKLER AND GET AWAY. USE ONLY UNDER ADULT SUPERVISION. FOR OUTDOOR USE ONLY.

Whew, thank goodness those toddlers have such clear instructions, written in a language they most likely don't even speak. And in case you are craving more information about this quality product, feel free to visit their website, www.anilgroup.com. You will get a server error.