The lamps are still burning along the ghat. By morning some of them will be ash and rainwater, the steps will smell of ghee and marigold, and the dark will come back as it always does.
And yet.
Something happened in those few nights that the ordinary day will not understand.
Diwali does not need the light. The light needs Diwali. For a few days the whole city was given permission to be lit — every ledge, every step, every small clay lamp — and people stood on the ghats and looked at the river full of fire and felt, for one evening, that they were part of something larger than their own small concerns.
That is what a festival does. It borrows a moment and hands you back a memory.
But the lamp was never the point. The lamp was the excuse.
Here is the truth of jyoti, the inner light. It does not need oil. It does not need a festival. It does not need to be seen by anyone. It is already lit, and it is the same light that was lit in every clay lamp on the ghat.
The only practice is noticing.
Sit for a moment, in the dark or in the ordinary light of a Tuesday. Put your attention on the place in the chest that knows something about warmth. It will not be dramatic. It will feel small. That is how you know it is the right place.
The lamps on the ghat will go out. They were never meant to last.
You were.
