By Kamlesh Tripathi

Copyright@shravancharitymission

THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS—HAPPY DIWALI

Kamlesh Tripathi

It’s Diwali, the festival of lights,
That celebrates the victory of good over evil,
Truth over falsehood, hope over fear,
And spreads joy all over.

It’s five days of passionate festivities,
With sweets, rangoli, and lamps, freely available.
The fireworks ascend,
As darkness recedes and sorrow ends.

It celebrates wisdom dispels ignorance,
Pokes through the veils of the mind’s ignorance.
As Ashwin wanes and Kartik begins,
Amavasya’s darkness brings a new dimension.

Marked in October or November’s embrace,
It follows the harvest with warmth and grace.
Before winter descends with its chill,
The golden diyas shine to the hilt.

From Dhanteras and Dhanvantari’s healing art,
To Lakshmi and Ganesha, cherished in every heart;
The churning ocean’s treasures of yore,
Find echoes in legends and sacred lore.

Ayodhya glows as Rama returns,
With Sita and Lakshman in his fold.
Hanuman’s loyalty adds to the cheer,
As Diwali lamps magnify the cheer.

From Ravana’s fall to Rama’s victory,
From Krishna’s triumph over Narakasura’s cruelty,
With Shiva, Vishnu, Durga and Kali’s grace,
Gods and demons meet in myth’s timeless space.

Sparklers and phuljhadis brighten the skies,
As radiant sparks dance across the skies.
The darkest night wears a celestial glow,
While hopes blossom where lamps aglow.

In life’s struggles, Diwali brings light,
It’s an oasis of peace in a world of fright.
The cosmos adorns its glorious robe,
As countless lamps illuminate the globe.

May love conquer hatred, may goodness unite,
May every heart shine with compassion bright.

Let joy and peace bless every life—
Happy Diwali, a festival of light!

kamleshsujata@yahoo.com

(The author is a senior ex-corporate executive, a cancer activist and a columnist)

Written and posted by Kamlesh Tripathi

Author, Poet, & Columnist

*

https://kamleshsujata.wordpress.com

*

Like it and Share it

*

Shravan Charity Mission is an NGO that works for poor children suffering from life-threatening diseases, especially cancer. Our posts are for readers, including children and adults, and cover a wide range of topics. We also accept donations for our mission. If you wish to donate to the cause of cancer, please use the details below. The bank details are given below:

NAME OF ACCOUNT: SHRAVAN CHARITY MISSION

Account no: 680510110004635 (BANK OF INDIA)

IFSC code: BKID0006805

***

Copyright@shravancharitymission

QUOTES 3/11/26
**
The ID card was launched with fantastic claims about supposed benefits. In truth, it represented the worst of govt…DAMIAN GREEN
*
Monism and dualism are essentially the same…As dualists hold the father and son to be two, monists hold them to be really one. Dualism is in nature, in manifestation, and monism is pure spiritually in essence… SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
*
In all politics truth is optional… TOI 3/11/26
*
Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in the Senate…ORSON WELLES
*
Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness…ECKHART TOLLE
*
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value…R BUCKMINSTER FULLER
*
All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair…MITCH ALBOM, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
*
I hate flying. Know why? Because no one really understands how planes actually work…ADAM LEVINE
*
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation… OSCAR WILDE
*
They wanted an America that is too small for some of us. We know that this is an America that is big enough for all of us…ABDUL EL-SAYED, Senator-elect, Michigan
*
Nothing hurls an individual towards their goals faster than the string of defeat. That’s when all the probing post-mortem questions get asked. Victory is the fluffing up and reinforcing of the existing ego…STEWART STAFFORD
*
Good wine is a necessity of life for me… THOMAS JEFFERSON
*
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce…KARL MARX
*
How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can’t destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing…PAULO COELHO
*
Key is how we think not what we think
*
It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed…LENIN
*
Only two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying scriptures and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing… RAMAKRISHNA PARAMHANSA

Copyright@shravancharitymission

Copyright@shravancharitymission

WE’RE ALL ABOARD THESEUS’S SHIP
Jug Suraiya

On the voyage that we call life, we are all in a sense sailing on the ship of Theseus, a hero of Greek mythology.
Theseus, the legendary king of the city of Athens, rescued the sacrificial victims held hostage by the monstrous Minotaur, a beast with the head and tail of a bull and the body of a man, whom he slew in the maze of the labyrinth and, with the 14 young men and women he had freed, sailed to safety aboard his ship to the isle of Delos.
According to the 4th century CE annalist Plutarch, citizens of Athens would each year honour Theseus by re-enacting his voyage to Delos on his ship. With the passage of time, the planks and sails of the ship decayed and had to be replaced. Over the years, all the parts of the original vessel had been changed, giving rise to the philosophical question: Was the rebuilt ship still of Theseus or something entirely different?
1200 years later, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes compounded the question by proposing that if a second ship were to be built using all the discarded parts of the original, which would be the real ship of Theseus, the older one built of new parts or the new one built of old parts? What is the quiddity, or the fundamental essence, that defines the ship of Theseus?
The old saying, attributed to Heraclitus, asserts that you can’t step into the same river twice, because the flowing water isn’t the same as it was when you first stepped into it, and you’re not the same you as you were when you first walked into the water, either. The Greek philosopher uses this analogy to convey the idea that everything, rivers, humans, clouds, Earth itself, is in a state of perpetual flux, of constant change. Nothing is in a state of stasis. Nothing is permanent.
Of the approximately 300tn cells that our bodies are made up of, over 300bn, or about 1% of the total, are replaced every day. Today you are a 1% different you than the you who you were yesterday, and you will be a different you tomorrow. In 7 years, all the cells in our bodies will be replaced. So, in 7 years, we will be a 100% different from what we are today.
Our bodies are made up of seven octillion atoms, that is 7 followed by 27 zeros. When we eat, drink, breathe or indeed perform any activity or biological function, atoms from our bodies are expelled, and atoms from the biosphere, which come from other people and other sources, are absorbed by us. Everything on earth is connected in an unending circle of life.
We’re all made up of hundreds of billions of atoms that were once part of other bodies. This molecular interchangeability blurs the boundaries separating religions, races, nationalities, and all other divisiveness including that of gender. We are literally part of one another. All of us are fellow passengers on the ship of Theseus.

Copyright@shravancharitymission

QUOTES 29/10/26
**
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others…GEORGE ORWELL, Animal Farm
*
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings…Anais Nin
*
Sex on the mind, Fear in the heart…wrote Khushwant Singh back in the 1970s
*
It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk…BERTOLT BRECHT
*
This, dear Phaedrus, is the most important point: no geometry without the word. Without it, figures are accidents, and neither make manifest nor serve the power of the mind…Paul Valery, Dialogues
*
Humans can exist without justification, and there does not need to be any evolutionary explanation for…say… picking your nose…SAUL J NEWMAN
*
Smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am said…ANNE BRONTE, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
*
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is a green-eyed monster which does mock
The meat it feeds on; that cuckhold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;
But, O, what damned minutes tells he o’er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!… WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, OTHELLO
*
To boldly go where no man has gone before… KLINGON
*
We often find far more power in a symbol than in something that is in actuality…STEVEN BERKOFF
*
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that wordly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul…GOETHE
*
It is not talking but walking that will bring us to heaven…MATTHEW HENRY
*
Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion… Impossible is nothing… MUHAMMAD ALI
*
One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute… WILLIAM FEATHER
*
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them…GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
*
No body in India will tell you it’s 5 o’clock and certainly, no Indian will ever remind you it’s the weekend 2.11.26 ET

Copyright@shravancharitymission

So happy to receive this letter on behalf of Shravan Charity Mission from Dr Amita Mahajan, Apollo Hospitals Delhi. Sharvan Charity Mission has been helping poor children suffering from cancer since 2007. We hope to continue with this noble cause till eternity.