A Lamp of Hope

Our apartment glowed with lights of different hues as the whole family gathered to celebrate the festival of lights, Diwali. The air in our house smelled of mouth-watering delicacies. Clad in a new dress, I was happily lighting earthen lamps in the balcony. I looked out and found the whole housing society glittering with lights. As the sound of bursting crackers echoed in my ears, I ran back to my Dad. He chuckled and cuddled me close to him.

"Look over there," he said, patting me, "there is a patch of darkness over there."

I looked in the direction he was pointing his finger at. Beyond the huge boundary wall of our housing colony, there was a slum. The people who stayed there were so poor that they couldn't afford to light lamps or buy crackers. Hence the whole slum was drenched in darkness while the houses all around glittered with light.

"Let's light it up," Dad said as he held my little fingers in his hand.

He took a few lamps, some crackers and a large box of sweets and led me to the slum. We lit one lamp outside every house and offered sweets to the family that lived there. Then my father called all the children out into the open and burst crackers with them. Their poverty-ridden gloomy faces glowed with a new ray of hope as the light from the tiny earthen lamps reflected perfectly in their eyes. That was the best Diwali I had ever celebrated. I had heard a saying that happiness becomes double when shared. As I watched those happy faces I realized how true it was.