Alone on Diwali: When the Festival of Lights Feels Like a Spotlight on Being Alone

Diwali is a spotlight. It illuminates everything, the decorated homes, the coordinated family photographs, the togetherness that spills out of every doorway in the form of light and sound and the smell of something sweet frying in oil. And when the spotlight falls on a room where one person sits alone, the aloneness is not just visible. It glows. It becomes the most well-lit version of itself, and I have never known a loneliness more thoroughly exposed than the one I carry on the night of Diwali.

First, the morning. I cleaned the flat. I have described this to friends as "getting into the Diwali spirit," which is a generous interpretation of what was actually an attempt to fill the hours before the evening with activity that felt purposeful. I wiped surfaces that were already clean. I arranged cushions. I placed a small Ganesh idol on the shelf near the window, the one I bought from a shop in Lajpat Nagar two years ago, and the idol looked at me with his ceramic eyes and I looked at him and neither of us commented on the fact that we were the only ones here.

Second, the preparation. I made a small puja thali. The items were correct: roli, rice, a diya, a packet of mithai from the shop downstairs because I do not possess the skill or the kitchen infrastructure to make kaju katli and because Ma's kaju katli exists in a category of perfection that I have accepted I will never reach. The thali was adequate. It was also the saddest object I have ever assembled, not because anything was missing from it technically, but because everything was missing from it emotionally. A puja thali is meant to be part of a scene, a family gathering, voices reciting together, a mother's hands guiding the aarti. Mine sat on the counter between the toaster and the electric kettle, and its solitude mirrored my own with a precision I found almost artistic.

Third, the puja itself. I lit the diya. I folded my hands. I closed my eyes and tried to pray but the prayer kept being interrupted by the sound of firecrackers from the building next door and the laughter of children in the corridor and the bass of a Bollywood song playing in the flat above, and each sound was a reminder that the festival was happening around me, to other people, with other people, and I was performing a parallel version of it, a one-person production of a celebration designed for many.

Fourth, the evening. I sat on the balcony. The city was extraordinary. Lights in every direction, diyas on every ledge, the sky bruised with colour from fireworks that cracked and bloomed and dissolved. It was beautiful. I want to be honest about that. It was genuinely, achingly beautiful. And I sat in my plastic chair on my narrow balcony and watched it the way a person watches a party through a window, present and absent in equal measure, close enough to feel the warmth but not close enough to be warmed by it.

I called Ma. She was mid-puja. "Abhi busy hain, baad mein call karti hoon." She called back two hours later. By then the firecrackers had thinned and the city was settling into that post-Diwali quiet, the particular silence that follows a collective burst of joy, like the silence after applause. She asked if I had done the puja. I said yes. She asked if I had eaten. I said yes. She did not ask if I was lonely because the question would have required an answer neither of us was prepared for, and so we talked around it, the way you walk around a puddle on the street, carefully, deliberately, pretending the puddle is not there.

I mentioned it once, weeks later, in passing, on Haven. Not the full weight of it. Just the outline. "Diwali was hard this year." The person I was talking to said "mine too" and the two words carried more comfort than any festival greeting I had received, because they were not performative and they were not a forwarded message and they were not followed by a sparkle emoji. They were just true. And truth, on a night when everything is decorated and shining and loud, is the quietest and most necessary light of all.

Fifth, the next morning. I cleaned the thali. I put the Ganesh idol back on the shelf. I went to work. Nobody asked how my Diwali was, which was both a relief and a confirmation. The spotlight had moved on. The aloneness returned to its usual dimness. And I carried on, the way one does, with the festival folded into the archive of experiences I do not fully share with anyone, not because they are shameful but because they require a listener who understands that a diya lit alone is not the same as a diya lit in company, even if the flame looks identical.