Diwali: A Celebration of Light, Choices, and Timeless Tradition

Each year, as Diwali inches closer, there’s a shift—a quiet crackle in the air, an almost inaudible hum that fills homes and hearts. Windows are flung open to welcome the coolness of October, and every corner of the house seems to throb with a secret it’s keeping, waiting to be alive again, just for a little while.

In the bazaar, marigolds tumble from baskets in bright, extravagant heaps, orange and yellow petals spilling out like little explosions of joy. There’s the sharp, sweet smell of sugar and incense, of things old and things yet to be. Strings of lights glint in the hands of shopkeepers, each light a small promise waiting to be taken home, to cast its glow over rooms that, for a few shimmering days, might feel a little less ordinary.

Inside, families are drawn into the soft, familiar rituals that make Diwali what it is, what it always was. Mitti ke diye—humble clay lamps—are lined up with a care and reverence that only comes with rituals that know themselves. Diyas waiting like tiny soldiers, knowing that by dusk, each will be lit, each will play its part in the night’s choreography. Passed down from hand to hand, dadi to maa to beta, these rituals are threads that stitch generations together, each diya a quiet reminder of the past, each diya a whispered blessing for what’s to come.

In the kitchen—the thick, bustling heart of Diwali—laughter mingles with old, worn-out stories and the warm smell of ghee and elaichi. Recipes that are as old as time itself, shaped in hands that remember and hands that are learning. Some mithai from the halwai down the road, some made at home, each sweet carrying the taste of a memory that has lingered, sticky, on the edges of childhood. Children light phuljhadis, tiny sparklers that hiss and spit light, and their laughter rises into the night, echoing off walls, spilling out into the streets, filling the night with a joy that can’t be held back.

As the sun dips, the world begins to light up, diya by diya, each small flame spilling out onto doorsteps, casting a soft, golden glow that touches every house, linking one home to the next. Friends and family gather, not for grand things but for small, forgotten things. For warmth, for laughter, for moments that slip by too easily, for stories that only come alive in Diwali’s gentle glow. Each diya, each smile, a thread that ties them back to something fragile and unbreakable—a sense of belonging, a sense of home.

In a world that rushes forward every day, Diwali comes like a breath. An invitation to stop, to breathe, to listen to the laughter, the closeness, the warmth of people who stay close even when the world spins too fast. Diwali asks us to pause, to let go of the hurry, to be here, diya by diya, in the soft, forgiving light.

In every diya we light, we find ourselves—a reminder that the light we seek is the light we create, and in it lies the power to come home to ourselves.

|| Shubh Deepawali ||

So long, Farewell 2017

As the old year makes way for the new, 

Pat yourself for having come through,

Acknowledge the hits, reflect on your misses too...

Remember life continues in the way it should,

You will nurse feelings of happiness at times and, also be subject to the blues...

New beginnings will be many, closures a few,

Don’t loose sight of the goal-post, but enjoy your journey too!

And that folks, in sum and substance, is my  new year message for you.

Wishing you the start of memorable journey as you draw the curtains on this one. 

- Mark.

Bon voyage!

😊💫

Mentor Me!

“Ajay is a talented boy, but padhaai mein uska bilkul dhyaan nahi hain. He enjoys playing football and wants to be a footballer. But he needs to get through school first and finish his basic education.” And with these words began my journey as Ajay’s mentor. It’s been ten months now since then and Ajay and I have now become friends who meet every weekend discussing a gamut of interest areas ranging from Messi to the milky-way.

A reserved teen, Ajay, when I first met him through Mentor-Me India’s (MMI) mentoring initiative, was difficult to communicate with and, wary of my efforts in trying to reach out to him. Communication, I was told, was going to be one of the big challenges I would encounter in my mentoring journey with him. Add to that the swinging temperaments of a moody 16 year old whose view point of the world swayed along a callibrated scale that ranged from consuming passion to abject indifference, with skepticism playing the balancing act across the two extremities!

I knew it was going to be an uphill task when I signed-up with MMI; and the demand on my time is not what I’m referring to. Nothing quite prepares you in your journey as a mentor, as much as the experience of going through that journey itself. You may prepare all you want but make peace you will eventually with the fact that you’ll never quite be prepared. And so much as I would strategise and plan activities to break ice and befriend my mentee Ajay, he’d seem one-up on me, everytime, in derailing all of those with an agenda that’d convince me he was out to teach me a thing or two about dealing with ambiguity and, convince me that there was no such thing as coming planned for our encounters. That learning still continues!

I am now wiser in knowing that relationships – of this kind or any other for that matter – are organic. You could wish for them to be this way or the other and plan accordingly; fact is no amount of wishing and planning will get you anywhere. You’ve got to be at it and in it to experience what it has to offer and then take guided calls to manoeuvre it in the interest of the involved stakeholders. And nothing teaches you that better than an experience like this (marriage of-course is the other!)
 
So while I now mentally go about figuring how to make my interactions with Ajay a lot more engaging through fun and learning, I have also learnt how to curate plans on the go when he chooses to take the lead in structuring how he’d like to spend the session. It makes me happy to see him do this because to my mind, this is proof of the needle having moved on the behavioural compass along the axis of time. Ajay today is seemingly more confident and communicative than he was ten months ago. While he still wants to be a footballer, he now also realises that he likes studying (he’s been a first class student even with all of that last minute studying) and that a good academic foundation besides the quality of his game, will help him bag the necessary scholarships for a career as a sportsman.

And while I’d like to believe I’ve had some role to play in this transformational journey of his through our regular mentoring interactions over the year , I believe he is mentoring me more that I could have imagined mentoring him through the process. He continues to teach me an invaluable lesson – all children and youth deserve to be treated as individuals in their own right with unique identities of their own. I’m humbly learning that you may not agree with all of their opinions or world views but listen to them you must, show them respect, you must! Doing this has helped catalyse the buy-in process and built my credibility with Ajay. Importantly it has taught me, as much as it has him, to value and work on real-time feedback, besides promoting healthy debate for acceptance and exchange of divergent ideas. Nothing facilitates tolerance and builds healthy respect between individuals as much as this exposure.

Experiences such as these have made me realise while we all have our own journeys to make, no two journeys are ever, if at all, the same. And so there can never really be one best approach to addressing a situation because best in itself is relative.

Thank you MMI for reinforcing this learning through the opportunity you’ve provided!

Soap & Lather...

After a long while, I must confess, I have found myself addicted to a television soap. The last time I felt so excited about watching a television series was way back in the good ole' Doordarshan days of the 80's and early 90's - before satellite television announced its arrival on Indian shores.

Script writing for Indian television has undergone a drastic change since then. Infact, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to state that scripts these days are ludicrous in their very concept.  The strength about writing for television is in its inherent ability to get through to a cross-section of people to assimilate and absorb information differently, provoking, if not encouraging them, to respond and react in ways that maybe even they didn't know they were capable of. It is a powerful way of bringing in societal change through reflection, without any impositions. Sadly, Indian television has failed us all on this premise.

Imagine my surprise then at serependitiously catching a  gripping Turkish series play on Indian television at prime time! For a series that has its origins in a book, the Turkish serial, Fatmagul is quite a treat to watch. A refreshing storyline, the plot brings together a host of issues ranging from socio-cultural differences impacting human relationships on the one side to an ever increasing economic divide and its implications on collective consciousness, ethics on the other. And all of this pirouetted around a rape, raising disturbing questions, some of which may not even have answers!

The plot is gripping and the performances are immensely engaging to the point that it makes me feel like a bystander watching the story play out in real-time, experiencing the motions of it all along the journey from one episode to another. I particularly like the way roles have been chalked out to give sufficient latitude of expression for individual performances without overpowering the treatment of or compromising the storyline; This to the extent that even the ominous background score and scenic locales are used like rivets to anchor the plot from the sidelines without obstructing the story as it unfolds or take away from the performances.

The acting is rich and subtly highlights nuances in expression that only go on to make the performances even more believable and convincing as the story comes alive in the viewers mind.

Happy days are here again - on television, with international serials like these and their ilk being aired for Indian audiences who crave for meaningful visual content that appeals (as against appalls, given the saas-bahu drama we otherwise get to see unfold on our screens) to their cerebral sensibilities. Truely, as far as quality of Indian television goes, there are (imported) soaps and then there's (desi) lather!