With thousands of workers painstakingly handmaking vast volumes of firecrackers, Sivakasi in southern
India is usually at full tilt before Diwali.
In addition to gifts, elaborate feasts and family get-togethers, the Hindu mega-festival of lights, which falls this weekend, has in recent years also meant setting off firecrackers -- millions of them.
Just before Diwali last year, India's top court ruled only "green crackers" that emit fewer pollutants could be used.