Last night, I watched the diyas outside homes, their little flames pushing back the darkness. No speeches. No publicity department. No enormous photograph of the person who had lit them. Just light doing what light is supposed to do. I wondered whether we could persuade a few of those diyas…


Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.