A midsummer day's nightmare, which for some unknown reasons keeps　on recurring every year during this time. It's August 15th. An　important day in the calendar for many people. It's Indian independence　day ( which is as bad as a nightmare can get if you think of those　bombs going on all around the country ).　It's Japanese End-Of-War day,　the day Japan surrendered, after the fireworks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's also Obon, or the lantern festival, the day to remember the souls of your dead ancestors. I, in fact, tried to remember an ancestor who lived 50,000 years ago, but didn't have any name or things like that to go by, but anyway, I remembered him. Every year I'm planning to go back by 50,000 years till I reach a stage where my ancestor is an Australopithecus who walked straight. Conservative estimates say that it'll take me 40 years to reach there (believing those bogus scientists' claim of 2 million years since man evolved). In the meantime I give a skip to all my ancestors in between. Let them rest in peace (piece – s).
This midsummer festival -Obon- is an important one in the Japanese calendar. Most companies give holidays to their employees so that they can go home to celebrate Obon. That is where the nightmare comes in - the going home part. Everybody tries to travel at the same time. The trains and flights are full. People waiting for cancellations and cursing the other guy's ancestors. People in expressways jammed for 50-60 kilometres. By the time they reach their hometowns and villages, it'd be time for them to turn back for the return drama called the U-turn rush by TV announcers. Somehow, I think, they (the TV people reporting from atop helicopters etc., over the expressways) derive the same kind of sadistic pleasure out of this fiasco, as I do watching it.
Another good thing during Obon is that I might just be able to find a vacant seat in the subway train on the way to office as all these guys are caught in traffic jams and airport lobbies. Why do they do this? It's a ritual that is performed every year without any break. The going-home-coming-back ritual.
Another important ritual is the bon-odori (odori means dance in Japanese), a form of folkdance, which in Tamil we could call tappakoothu. Perhaps a bit slower than tappakoothu. Small stages are built, usually in the local Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine compounds, on which people dance all night to the music. It's similar to the Utsavams we have in our temples, with a little less techno-disco-beat and little less noise. Sitting in my office, I saw the local people building the stage for their Bon-Odori in a vacant parking lot. Good for them. In the meantime, I'm going home to try and sleep early. My favourite midsummer night's dream comes on at 9 o'clock.

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