India, Oct. 31 -- Thus, one more Diwali passed - filling the air with smog, stuffing human lungs with soot, turning currency into char, and additionally, this time, drawing flak from across oceans. I doubt if the people of Ayodhya had burst crackers and defiled the pristine atmosphere of their city with fumes and noise when their king returned home after fourteen years.
The light had come home, and they had every reason to celebrate - with gaiety and pomp. So they lined the streets with thousands of lamps to symbolise the triumph of good over evil and led him back to his throne. Not in his wildest dreams would Lord Ram have thought that eons later his people would make the occasion an antithesis of it all. That the allegory of his victory ...