Dear Editor,
I would like to thank all those who used the Deepavali celebration to terrorize my one-month-old daughter and my two dogs. From around 6.30 am on Friday, November 5, my neighbour started rowing with children lighting squibs, informing them that I had managed to get my wife and two daughters to spend the weekend with me. Throughout the whole day you could hear the thunderous roar of the ‘bomb’ squibs, and my one-month-old baby kept jumping out of her sleep and crying.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to see who was lighting them. Every time I ventured out of the house I noticed my dogs running to me and cuddling up at my feet, but I didn’t really notice that this behaviour was more unusual than normal until my wife commented on it, then I realized that it was the squibs causing them to act like that. In the evening as Hindus started to light their diyas, it really got rough, and my dogs started to bodily brace me to try and get inside.
I left home and took my three-year-old daughter for a walk, and when I came back my wife informed me that a group of about eight boys had passed, and one of them had said, “Let’s throw some bombs at these bad dogs.” She said she cursed them, and then they started to light the squibs and throw them in the yard.
Editor, all the time she had my one-month-old daughter in her arms, and had I come home at the same time I am quite sure the Uitvlugt sideline would have made the news.
These parents would give their children five hundred dollars for them to light squibs and enjoy a five-second adrenaline rush, whilst they don’t give two bits for others and their animals. I depend heavily on the dogs for protection at home, and I treat them with a lot of care, and only others in a similar position would understand how I feel when teens terrorize my animals and my one-month-old daughter like that.
More holidays are coming up, and I do hope parents would advise their children before they leave the house. Calling the police would only make them laugh at you; besides they never have transportation.
In closing I would like to congratulate the neighbourhood police that arrested the men who had squibs for vendors to sell to children in Anna Catherina.
Yours faithfully,
Sahadeo Bates
