FIREWORKS!

I was in cab on the way home from terawih on the eve of Ramadan when I saw fireworks lighting up the sky near the apartments where I live. They do start early this year, I told my usual cab driver. “Tak lama lagi nanti kita baca berita ada yang accident main mercun ni,” Hasanudin said.

He was not far from wrong. Today, a day short of a week into the fasting month, I read that a four-year-old kid lost his fingers when the “A-Boom” fireworks he was playing with exploded in his left hand.

No one really knew what happened. Only the boy can tell. He may have thrown the lighted fireworks too late or he may have tampered with the fireworks and it blew up on him.

The irony is we only read about these mishaps during the fasting month and well into Syawal too. Yes, only during these times; hardly ever during Chinese New Year although fireworks are big during their celebrations.

I played with fireworks when I was growing up and I have had a few mishaps myself.

The first incident was when I was still a toddler. Mak said I was throwing the metal holder of the sparkler but it somehow bounced back and the still-hot portion of the sparkler burned through my clothes and “lekat” at my stomach.

When I was older, I graduated to fireworks. Once, the bottle I had used to hold up the fireworks had toppled and the fireworks pointed towards me. The sparkles from the fireworks burned holes in the light blue shirt I was wearing. It was my favourite.

Some years ago, I brought home fireworks that would light the sky like those during the Merdeka and New Year celebrations albeit on a much, much smaller scale.

The problem with lighting these fireworks was that the wick is long. Most often than not, it would fizzle out before it reached the explosive. Or so I thought. It blew up as I got closed to it to check if it needed to be relit. It didn’t fry my brain but I was very nearly close to being deaf in one ear.

And my mother (yes, my mother … not my father) tells me they never had any fireworks mishaps during her time. Mind you, theirs are not the factory-made fireworks that we now play. They played with homemade bamboo or steel pipe cannons, which I think are far more dangerous.

Mak tells us of those good old days of competing who has the loudest cannon among the nearby kampong. She relates how she and her friends would listen to the hissing sound coming out of the bamboo or steel pipe (when carbide and water mix) and then, KABOOOOOOM! “Tak ada pun yang putus jari … (tak ada pun) yang mati,” she said.

While there may be no mishaps, Mak said some of her friends got punished by their parents; one for playing truant (they should be at the mosque or surau for terawih) and two, that they could have lost their lives playing with the bamboo or steel pipe cannons.

Fireworks are not a Malay thing. Lighting the kerosene-filled pelita is but not fireworks. Even then, some houses prefer the electric lampu lip-lap instead.

But still, more and more Malay children – more boys than girls – spend their Ramadhan and/or Syawal in the hospital after getting themselves injured playing with fireworks.

Why is that?