Festival · 2086
The portal of Festivals
Turn a card. Answer all three rightly and this portal is sealed in your sky. New riddles every morning.
May the lamps you light tonight reach the corners of your life that have waited longest for light, and may you be someone else's lamp this year.
असतो मा सद्गमय तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय मृत्योर्मामृतं गमय
asato mā sadgamaya tamaso mā jyotirgamaya mṛtyormāmṛtaṁ gamaya
Its meaning
Lead me from the unreal to the real. Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from death to immortality.
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.3.28
When, for Surat
5 November 2086
Krishna Chaturdashi · until 3:02 PM
Kept on the day its tithi runs at dusk (pradosh).
Do
Before the lamps are lit, clean one corner of the house that has been neglected, and give away what you no longer use.
Leave aside
Firecrackers that frighten animals, elders and the sick. The rite is the lamp.
Add your name and send the link. It opens as your wish, with the timing for their own city, the verse, and how to keep the day.
Wishing you a blessed Deepavali
Every festival on its right day for Surat, inside your phone's own calendar, each one opening its page here. It renews itself every year. No account needed.
For Outlook or any other calendar, add the copied link as a calendar from the internet. For another city, open this page for that city first.
A gentle reminder three days before each festival and on its morning, with its timing for your city.
The Moon is new and gives no light, and the Sun is in the sign where Jyotish holds it weakest all year. Few nights are lit less by the sky; the tradition's answer is to light the earth.
The darkest night of the year, and the tradition's answer to it is not to wait for light but to make it. A row of lamps against an amavasya.
4 stories the day keeps. Turn each card.
After fourteen years in the forest and the war in Lanka, Rama returns to Ayodhya with Sita and Lakshmana. The tradition tells that the city lit its lamps to bring its king home through the dark.
The return: Valmiki Ramayana, Yuddha Kanda. The lamps: the living tradition.
When the ocean of milk was churned, Lakshmi rose from it, and of all who stood there she chose Vishnu. On this night she is worshipped at home: the house cleaned, the door lit, the accounts set in order, a place made ready for her.
Bhagavata Purana 8.8; Vishnu Purana 1.9.
Narakasura held sixteen thousand women captive. Krishna, with Satyabhama beside him, defeated him and set them free. The day before Diwali, Naraka Chaturdashi, remembers it with an oil bath before dawn.
Bhagavata Purana 10.59.
The generous king Bali promised the dwarf Vamana three steps of land. Vamana grew vast and covered the worlds in two; Bali offered his own head for the third. Moved, Vishnu gave him a world of his own, and the day after Diwali, Bali Pratipada, is the day he is said to visit his people.
Bhagavata Purana 8.15 to 8.23; Bali Pratipada as the tradition keeps it.
5 days kept as one season. Each has its own page.
Dhanvantari's day: health, and a lamp at the door.
3 November 2086Naraka Chaturdashi
Krishna frees the captives; an oil bath before dawn.
Lakshmi at dusk; the lamps against the new moon.
You are hereKrishna lifts the hill; a mountain of food is shared.
7 November 2086A sister's tilak and meal; Yama visits Yamuna.
8 November 2086Often said
Firecrackers are part of the rite.
The root
The rite is the lamp: Deepavali means a row of lamps. Fireworks came centuries later, and the night is kept just as fully without them, and more kindly to the old, the sick and the animals.
Often said
Lakshmi comes to the house that spends the most tonight.
The root
In the Mahabharata, Lakshmi tells Indra where she lives: with the truthful, the diligent, the generous and the self-restrained, and she leaves where these fail. Her welcome is a clean, honest, generous house, not a costly one.
Often said
Gambling tonight brings a lucky year.
The root
A story tells of Shiva and Parvati playing dice on this night, and a custom grew from it. No text makes gambling part of the worship; the rite is the lamp and the puja.
Free acts, done by you. Kept so far this year: 0 of 3.
Before the lamps are lit, clean one corner of the house that has been neglected, and give away what you no longer use.
Share a meal or sweets with someone who will spend this night alone: a neighbour, a guard, a worker far from home.
Ask the eldest in your family how Diwali was kept when they were young, and write down one thing they tell you.
Each act is free and done by you. Keeping one writes it to your karma ledger with the day's panchang. Nothing here is ever bought, and no act is a remedy.
The youngest
Draws the rangoli at the door and lights the first lamp, with an elder's hand beside theirs.
The eldest
Tells one story of the night in their own words: Rama's return, or Lakshmi rising from the ocean.
Everyone
Before the puja, each person names someone who brought them light this year.
Bengal, Odisha and Assam
The same new moon is Kali Puja: the night is kept for the Mother in her fierce form.
Gujarat
Diwali closes the year. The next morning, Bestu Varas, is the new year, begun with new account books.
Tamil Nadu
The day before, Naraka Chaturdashi, is the great day: an oil bath before dawn, new clothes, sweets at first light.
Maharashtra
The day after is Padwa, Bali Pratipada, and Bhau Beej, the sister's day, follows it.
Jain and Sikh households
Jains keep the night as Mahavira's nirvana; Sikhs keep Bandi Chhor Divas, the release of Guru Hargobind from Gwalior fort.
Kept on the day its tithi runs at dusk (pradosh).
The day is chosen by the moment the tradition reads its tithi at, and the times are that day's own, computed for this city. A festival-specific puja window is not printed: those rules differ by tradition and await a scholar's review.
The stories, their sources and the regional customs on this page await a scholar's review. The sky and the dates are computed for your city.