On diyas

Diyas have fascinated me since forever. There is something infinitely Indian about a diya. It speaks of a dark prayer room divinely lit with its warmth, of light emanating from a humble combination of clay and cotton wick, and of diwali where hundreds of them join together to form golden threads of brightness. The glowing droplet of light shivers in excitement as a breeze caresses it, making it move with all the grace of an elegantly draped sari. The wind and the diya playfully dance, and the pointed light laughs as the wind tickles it. Nay, the coldness of a stiff, white candle cannot replace the earthy warmth that a diya is. There is no oil left to throw away, unlike the little stub of hardened candle wax that cannot produce any more light. Every drop of oil is greedily consumed by the wick to keep the light alive, brightening many seconds of gloomy darkness.

The night grows weary, but the diya continues to brighten the threshold. The night blows harder, but the light merely bends, without breaking. Patiently, the night waits for the diya to tire. You can feel the diya’s reluctance in dying out, as it begins to alternatively blink and glow. It aches for a hand to feed it, while the night giggles and coughs up stars. Its time has come, its day is over. But wait; there is no ‘the end’ for a diya. All you have to do is call upon it, and it shall encircle you with the same light and comfort as it always did. And it is this fact that brings light to our life, in knowing that there are some things which can be renewed even after ‘the end’, that even when the cold night has extinguished all signs of light ever having existed, a thin, weak wick and a drop of oil are all that are needed…