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Lamp Washing

I spent a good hour cleaning up the earthen lamps I lit for Diwali. They have been around for a few years now and by any standard would be considered quite ordinary - I had bought them at the local Indian grocery store. Every year when I light them, my thoughts turn to children in India who likely labored over these lamps. To make them look less mass manufactured (as they are) someone had to paint and embellish them by hand - that would be the kind of job a relative young child could do. 

There are some many intertwined layers of wrong here that a person would always be in error no matter what they did. Cleaning the lamps is my way of showing gratitude and contrition at the same time. Some child somewhere in the country where I was born made this thing  and it did not bring any joy to them. It is likely they spent Diwali without light and food. People like me around the world, enjoyed the fruit of their labor, celebrated the festival of lights. We talked to our kids about the significance of the rituals. 

We likely did not spend nearly as much time talking to them about child labor involved in making Diwali happen - lamps, firecrackers and more. We gloss over these things - save that somber talk for another time. I make it a point to think about the provenance of these lamps every year when I light them. Even if they are just my thoughts, not spoken out loud to anyone, they help me atone in my small limited way. Washing and reusing them is some more atonement. There is some value to take pause and consider such things even for a few minutes once a year. There is no clear and well-defined path to saving these children even for large global companies who are in a position to help at meaningful scale. 

Its easy for a consumer to feel guilty and try to buy things that are child-labor free. We could all do that and end up hurting those children we desire to save even more. Though our over-zealous actions we could rob them of their only livelihood, make things so much worse. I recognize the futility of it all but still can't bear the thought of throwing these lamps out, buying myself some new ones. 

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