Diwali – let the light shine

Nov 04, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Diwali is of the purity of light. The light that pierces any kind of darkness, and fills our hearts with the joy of those ingredients, which bring the evils of the world to a pause, the longest one.
We celebrate Diwali today, and extend a hand of friendship and brotherhood to all Guyanese, and this is regardless of race or religion, place in society, or their own thinking of us. In the spirit of Diwali, we reach for both friends and well-wishers, and also any of our fellow citizens who hold us as enemies.
We need more light in this country, and any kind of light that is about the many truths that are missing in the lives of Guyanese, which twist us into knot, and leave us not with the sacredness of light, but of a thick overwhelming darkness. One does not have to be a practicing Hindu to appreciate that this is where we are, and this is what we must strive to rid from our minds and lives.
No oil, no leader, no politics should interfere with the lights that struggle to take hold in this society, but fades into the dullest flicker, sometimes not even that fast vanishing spark. Yet as we say and insist that we are about the light, we blind ourselves to the realities of what troubles this land, what has harmed it already, and promises to do more of the same in the future. One can be either a believer or an atheist, but still has to remember that if there is no light, there can be no truth.
The oil came, and all the riches and powers that come along with those and when those came, the lights went out. The self-enriching would go to their respective places of worship, and bow before the light of their deities, as if those gods are blind and lacking. While those left behind are left with their fading hopes with new developments that speak of the darkness that flourish in the fertile minds of those who object to, even fight the light.
It is how to trick and cheat, and remember today is not Halloween in America, but Diwali in Guyana.
The demonic has taken hold here at every level in this society. Men and women make big speeches and bigger splashes about truth and light, but all the while, they are about what is deceptive, in the carefully false, the obviously distorted and crooked. Light does not hide, does not shrink, does not sputter, which is why we invite all of our fellow Guyanese, whether or not observing and celebrating Diwali today, to examine sensibly, what we have in our midst, amid all the activities and festivities.
As we clean our homes as part of our Diwali preparations, we must work harder and longer to go beyond the tangible: we must clean our hearts, to where no one is looked upon as an enemy, but as someone who is a brother or sister, and fellow child of God. That is part of the gracious and incomparable essence of Diwali, and no social differences should be given nourishment to develop root and flourish. It does not matter what is our religious persuasion, because a wise sifting through such brings to the understanding that all the teachings of all the faiths speak to and point to light, and all the rich pure elements that come from it.
We need to rebuild so that we can revive. Perhaps, as we revive, we will give ourselves the space (and the grace) to survive the poisons of our petroleum and politics, and the perversities that flush upward and outward from them. Today it is Diwali, soon it will be the long Guyanese season of Christmas, and those other nationally celebrated moments of fasting and self-sacrifice in Islam and Buddhism. Look carefully, study slowly and most wisely. They all speak of light, and of a certain kind of character and feature that we, each one of us, must make our own.
There is an outstanding unselfishness, that features at a deeply personal level. When we reach that point, then Diwali, in whatever way celebrated, is every day, with thanksgiving and alms giving and forgiving.

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