Diwali is one of my favourite festivals. The festival of light – light that hounds every nook and corner of darkness like the quintessential teacher seeking query on the face of every student he comes across.
Light! The invention of light was momentous for the human race, equally momentous was conceiving light as particle that changed the nature of the universe. Light from light! Shakti Gawain in her book ‘Living in the Light’ has said – more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in. Light for light!
Vacation in Diwali and brief respite at sea beach – seemingly there is no correlation but happens to recur for me time & again. My favourite past time at the sea beaches is looking at the sea. Morning, noon, evening – anytime I look at, I find the sea restless yet she has a rhythm in her restlessness. Waves go up and down..on a rhythm. One wave at a time – minute after minute, hour after hour! Restless rhythm.
Dying away from rhythm! I have always wondered why adult salmons need a ‘salmon run’ – swim back from their living space of adulthood in the sea to their spawning ground in river. I have also been fascinated by their uncanny precision to find their own birth spot and dying immediately after giving birth. Sea gives them the power to sacrifice their life for posterity…away from the sea!
My vacation by the seashore came to an end as fast as a flower pot loses energy. With memories as fresh as the newly-bought crackers, I was ready to return. Looked at the sea for one last time…restless with endless waves, but never losing the rhythm – one wave after another. In the melancholy of short-lived vacation, I asked myself – am I getting restless? Suddenly I realized that like one wave after another, next Diwali vacation is just twelve months away. Life has its own rhythm.
October 2017 – three American physicists received Nobel prize in Physics for finding gravitational waves. Gravitational waves – from sea waves to earthquakes – wrinkle space-time – originally conceived by Einstein more than a hundred years back. An insight and gravitational waves…like light and sea waves, like the rhythm of life!
Light from light. Light for light!
Happy Diwali 2017!
Thanks,
–Samit