When I was a child, festivals were fun. They were about good food, perhaps new clothes, some token praying (from the kids' point of view). The tradition for Ganesh chaturthi for example.... My mother would get some clay(clay was easily available to make angeethis) and one day before, we kids would make a small ganesh idol. The next day that would be kept for the puja and on the day after that, immersed in a well nearby or a bucket of water which would then be used to irrigate the tulasi plant.
Now we have become "more traditional". everyone has a huge POP ganesh painted with gaudy, toxic colours and menacing young men coming around to collect "chanda". These ganesh pandals block roads causing a traffic jam.They go on for days playing loud music on speakers which cause your chest cavity to vibrate in resonance. And then the finale is that they immerse all this in already stressed water bodies.
So noise pollution, and water pollution. Oh did I leave out air pollution? never mind Deepavali is just round the corner.
Why have all our festivals become so violent?
They used to be so benign.
Someone should start a twitter campaign
 #make festivals traditional again.
 #no modern technology in religion
No loudspeakers, no toxic dyes, no POP, no fireworks,