We welcome the time of Diwali into our lives, preparing our minds and homes for the approaching Festival of Lights. It has now come to the point where more and more, as this world rolls forward on the bias, that we need Diwali’s auspicious light to not only guide us, but to also cleanse and heal.
The message in the lights of Diwali, in its healing, cleansing, and guidance is unalterable as it is eternal. Whether we celebrate Diwali in our modern times via ubiquitous smartphones, sending greetings electronically as pulses of light, or in the intimacy of our homes, either by switching on electric bulbs, or in “the old-fashioned way”, by physically putting a flame to a wick immersed in oil in a cup hand-fashioned with clay, the flickering diya, a bulb’s incandescent glow, a backlit smartphone’s screen, will always be an invocation of our religiosity, the accompanying glow warm and suffusing across the generations, and the passage of years.
Light will always remain a positive and powerful symbol. In the electric glow from a bulb, or the yellow flame of a lamp fueled with coconut oil, lies that wondrous capacity for dispelling darkness, where with its immanence, knowledge rises up to conquer ignorance, and is miraculous with relief, where good is uplifted to overcome evil and uncertainty.
It goes without saying we now live in uncertain times. At this time, our homelands are wracked by uncertainty, as in the case of Guyana, which is now functioning inside a state of unconstitutionality. There are many among us in the diaspora who have been weathering the storms of anxiety along with nationals back in our homeland following the constitutional fall of the government on December 21, 2018.
The refusal by the government to recognise the validity of the no-confidence vote, and the constitutional requirement that general elections be held within three months, cast an overarching pall of darkness both at home and abroad. Also, the passing of the September timeline, following the Caribbean Court of Justice upholding the validity of the no-confidence vote, while informing the caretaker Guyana administration that elections be held three months after June 18, 2019, added yet another layer of dark uncertainty to the pre-meditated narrative of delay. Recently, elections were finally set for March 2, 2020, more than a year after the government's December 21, 2018 constitutional downfall.
In Trinidad and Tobago, nationals continue to be assailed by crime, with daily murders adding layer upon layer of darkness. Our homeland is being slowly strangled by escalating homicides and bloodshed.
Also, our wider world continues to be wracked with uncertainty. Last week, one of the more challenging episodes occurred with the betrayal of the Kurds through a unilateral move by a transactional, uninformed US presidency. Now that the first domino has been so ruthlessly toppled, we can only await with trepidation for further unsettling and destabilisation in this war-wracked region. More darkness is coming to this part of the world.
In our acts of enabling light through Diwali’s tiny flames – the glowing of a single bulb, holding upwards the lit screen on a smartphone, or putting a flickering match to the oil-soaked wick on a clay diya – we become agents to spread light’s eminent goodness into the corners of our homes, and then en masse, as an exponential that lights up the entire world. Now, more than ever, we need to act in concert across the globe to dispel the appalling reign of darkness.
For us to invoke the sacred light of Diwali is to dispel despair and ignorance, enrich not only our minds while enlightening the souls of our leaders. More and more today, this world needs such spiritualism, prayer, and light.
As we celebrate Diwali here in Canada, in our homelands, and throughout the world, let us not forget its healing reassurances: enlightenment, prosperity, and hope.