The First Breeze
This morning, the breeze came. It was the smallest thing, a slight chill when I stepped outside, nothing anyone else would have noticed, but my body knew what it meant before I did.
Diwali is coming.
That breeze has been telling me the same thing since I was a child. I still remember the first breeze of winter in Delhi. It came on some ordinary evening in October, a degree cooler than the evening before, and I knew exactly what it was announcing.
Delhi has been somebody’s capital for the better part of a thousand years. Empires have come and gone, and the Diwali lamps have outlasted every one of them.
A City Slowly Catching Fire
Growing up in Delhi, every year the streets caught on slowly. Then all at once shops spilled out onto the streets with lanterns and strings of lights, glitter and color everywhere.
Potters sold clay diyas (small oil lamps) by the hundred off the roadside. Marigold garlands sat in orange heaps, and boxes of firecrackers were stacked higher than I could reach.
Houses were scrubbed and repainted, as if the whole city had agreed to start over at the same time. For weeks the air already smelled faintly of gunpowder, because somebody, somewhere, could never wait.
A Festival of Light and Sound
And on the biggest night of Diwali, every balcony and rooftop and windowsill filled with rows of small flames, until the whole city was one long row of lamps, left burning for someone coming home.
My brother, my two cousins and I spent those weeks in a permanent state of planning: which crackers to buy?How many rockets? What was new in the market this year? And how to talk our grandfather into paying for all of it.
And then the real question, the one that mattered most: What would give the neighbors some solid competition?
The Day That Pulls You Home
Every culture seems to have made for itself one day like this. Christmas, Eid, Hanukkah. A day when being with your family feels more connected than any other day of the year, and when being away from them makes you miss them a little more than usual.
You slip into a loop of childhood memories. And the deeper you go, the more chapters open up, until you arrive at a feeling that is cozy and nostalgic. But it is quietly sad at the same time because you are not home.
For me, that day is Diwali.
Many Festivals Wrapped Into One
If you have never celebrated it, imagine the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas merged into one five-day festival. Fireworks, lights, food, family, the whole neighborhood out on the street. And underneath all of it, the simple happiness of being together.
And it isn’t one festival so much as many festivals sharing a night. Every state and community in India has its own Diwali.
In the south it marks Krishna’s victory over the demon Narakasura. In Bengal the night belongs to the goddess Kali. For Jains it is the day Mahavira attained nirvana, and for Sikhs it is Bandi Chhor Divas, the day Guru Hargobind walked free from prison.
Shopkeepers across the country open new account books, and nearly everyone welcomes Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, into a freshly cleaned home. The lamps are the one thing we all agree on.
Grandpa’s Tale
Every Diwali my whole family gathered. After the evening puja (sacred worship ritual), when we had prayed to Ganesha for prosperity in the year ahead, my grandfather would settle himself beside the lamps and tell us the same story he told every year.
In northern India, where I grew up, the five days of Diwali are built around this tale.
Sita, the wife of Rama, is carried off by Ravana, the king of Lanka, who comes to her door disguised as a holy man. Rama walks the length of India to what is now Sri Lanka, defeats Ravana and brings her home.
The main night of Diwali is the night of that homecoming. The people of the city of Ayodhya lit rows of oil lamps to show Rama the way back after 14 years away, and that is why we still light them today. The word itself means a row of lamps.
The Moral of the Story
As kids, we barely listened. We were waiting for the story to end so we could run outside and fire the biggest skyshot firework we owned before the neighbor’s kid fired his.
But every year, when the whole story had been told one more time, my grandfather would pause. And in that pause, he said the one thing that stayed with me and has never left:
When wealth is lost, nothing is lost.
When health is lost, something is lost.
But when character is lost, everything is lost.
A Lesson From Grandpa
Ravana was no ordinary villain. He was believed to be the most learned man of his age, a king with every kind of knowledge and every kind of power, and he spent all of it on one wrong deed: taking Sita to settle a score with Rama.
As a kid, the story felt simple and wonderful. Good beats evil; the end. It took me years to see that it was never only about that.
What Grandpa meant, I think I finally understand. It doesn’t matter how powerful or how intelligent you are. If your character doesn’t grow alongside your power, the power hardens into ego, and ego is where intelligence ends.
What the Story Means to Me Now
Ravana had every gift and lost everything, because he lost the one thing that holds all the others together. A person rooted in both intellect and respect for others is wise, and that person is good for himself and for everyone around him.
Without that root, he is a danger to both.
As I grow older, the stories I have heard a hundred times begin to open up. They were never one-dimensional; the characters were carrying something deeper than the plot.
In the ancient epic, Ravana has 10 heads, and I no longer read that literally. The 10 heads are the 10 things that can take over a person: ego, lust, anger, greed, pride, envy, and the rest of that family.
Starting Fresh
Twenty days before Diwali we celebrate Dussehra, and across India enormous effigies of Ravana go up in flames. It marks the victory of truth over a long, patient lie: the lie that hate can win.
Even at the very edge, when it looks like evil is about to win, the truth beats it back. Sooner or later, it alwayswins.
The story mattered then and it matters now. Every year, my culture hands me a chance to burn my own worst side and start fresh. Maybe that is only a feeling. But that clear line between what was and what comes next is what makes life feel connected again.
I believe in a higher power, not because I want something from it. I believe because it keeps reminding me to stay rooted and to stay true to my convictions. At age 30, that is the only meaning of God I have.
Five Diwalis in America
I’ve been livingin the US for five years now, and the annual feeling that Diwali is coming has changed shape a little. The streets fill up with spooky Halloween lights instead of lanterns. But the first winter breeze still arrives right on schedule, and it still tells me the same thing it told me as a kid: Get ready.
Along the way, I’ve gained a holiday too. I’m someone who likes any excuse to celebrate, and I’m now just as excited for Halloween, which is funny and a little moving.
Fusing New Traditions With the Old
Humans are adaptive animals. We keep molding ourselves around new meanings—and we can, because happiness doesn’t have a language or a set way of doing things. It’s just a feeling.
And I’m lucky. My brother, my sister-in-law and a cousin are in Seattle, and for that one day we still celebrate Diwali with the same energy we had as kids. We decorate the house with the same love: diyas along the windowsill, a rangoli (traditional floor art), and our dogs racing through the house trying to snatch the garlands off the door.
We decorate it with the same hope, too: that this Diwali brings more prosperity and more love to our family and to everyone around us.
Diwali With Friends
Then there are the bonus nights with friends. I still remember my first Diwali in Tempe, Arizona, while I was working on my master’s degree at Arizona State University.
My friend William was more excited about decorating for it than I was. He put lamps on the ceiling, of all places, and the whole room glowed.
Now, in Denver, my friends and I finally have a night to wear our ethnic Indian clothes. We get together to make mithai, the sweets no Diwali is complete without, and somewhere in that glittering, slightly tipsy evening, we feel we are back home.
Lights That Guide Us
The first lamps in Ayodhya were lit to guide someone home. We light ours for each other now.
However far we are from home, it turns out it isn’t that far. We are home to each other.
