Forgotten Festivities

He walked down the corridor towards the noisy under-graduate class, barely taking in the surroundings. He still needed to word-smith that NSF proposal and review a paper for the conference in Atlanta . Suddenly a student loomed large in front of him and said, "Happy Diwali!". Confusion clouded his mind, as he tried to understand what was said. In a flash, he saw the electric shower of flower pots, the erratic spinning of the thara chakra and the sinuous movement of fake snakes from the chemical pellets.

He mumbled slowly, "Oh, I did not realise it was Diwali. I had forgotten all about it. Been ages since we celebrated it. I should tell my wife.."

Another Diwali lost in the memories of a desi, stuck in the limbo of the foreign land.