Loving the Flames – a peek into Unplanned Bonfires & Loving the Flickers!

Exploring Mood Enhancing Benefits of Sitting by Fire

I am not a pyromaniac, though I have a history of playing with fire and some mood-elevating medicines. Where is this coming from? Recently, I blogged about the Lohri bonfire and it emerged that lighting-up a small bunch of sticks and some random woody stuff from here and there, re-catalyzed the love for flame that once existed. For the longest time, when I was a child, there was this love for burning-up things and watching them melt and turn into a black mass.

[Suggested Reading: Celebrating Lohri in 2018]

Lohri – yes, it is essentially a Bonfire Thing!

There is a recurring discussion each time it is Lohri time here in Delhi – is this a real festival, why aren’t more people celebrating it or is this just a bonfire that makes people come together? For me, the cheerfulness is essentially about the bonfire thing. In a way, it is the perfect recipe – winter season and the opportunity to light-up a bonfire in metropolitan locales that are inhumanly low on person-to-person interactions, where running into each other seems like a mishap. Lohri carries the aura of coziness in the most literal sense. For the more dedicated Lohri enthusiast, this bonfire is like a beacon of sustaining sub-cultures that are in stark contrast to the city pattern that compartmentalizes and mechanizes our life.