A festival of lights..!

One of the most beautiful sights of my childhood was to see little flames dancing on the compound walls of my neighbors' every Diwali: Not the colored bulbs of today, so standard and artificial, but actual little flames, and as little lights danced out of small earthen pots filled with oil, I imagined them being warriors leaping left, right and centre, warding off evil, bad luck and other forces of darkness. I pray this Diwali such lights will fight the darkness and gloom that have entered homes this season, that the lights of good fortune will shine again in the abodes of those whose large investments have been lost in the market, that smiles will once again light the faces of housewives who sank that little extra household money on shares, and on husbands who's only fault while watching index going up was of a better life for their families.
I pray those lights will blaze into cesspools of darkness that lie in the minds of leaders who incite and instigate ignorant masses to ransack and ravage, injure and damage their brothers who hail from other parts of same country or worship god in forms different from their own: That these lights of Diwali will either transform such warped thinking, or burn them extinct. I hope this year that the Festival of Lights will light up this country again, that areas which go through hours of darkness, may through use of nuclear technology or forward thinking by our leaders get that wire, that electricity line into homes, carrying power that will shine brighter than petromax, candle or kerosene lamp.
My prayer also is that the light of knowledge through education will be availed and be available to more of our children who through such learning will be able to decipher and comprehend the tricks and deceit that white kurta clad leaders with blackened hearts have been fooling them with: That the light of understanding will make them rise in unison and ask for brotherhood through love, not death and destruction through hate.
That this Diwali we realize that no God whether Muslim, Hindu or Christian would want devotees, or followers to take up arms for his cause, that any such action is not that of light but one that stems from the forces of darkness and evil.
Ah those little flickering flames of my childhood; leaping to the left, darting to the right and spiraling up centre; I pray those same fires be kindled in our hearts into bonfires of love that will propel and carry us forward into blazing a trail of light in this country of ours: A powerful inferno that will never be extinguished ever by the powers of darkness.
Happy Diwali dear friends..!
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