Coming Home, Being Yourself.

Each year, when Diwali arrives, I don’t see it just as a festival of fireworks or sweets. I see it as a mirror. Reflecting how far we’ve come, and what we’ve let slip away.

This festival of light has lived through every yuga. The stories changed, the heroes changed, the rituals changed. But something at the core never did. Light over darkness, goodness over ignorance. Only the shadows changed shape.

In Satya Yuga, when truth was just… the way things were, Diwali began with the Samudra Manthan. The churning of the cosmic ocean. I keep coming back to what that churning really means. The devas and asuras, gods and demons, working together. Not fighting. Cooperating. Because what they wanted, the nectar of immortality, needed both of them pulling the same rope around the same mountain. The auspicious and the inauspicious, working as one.

And what came out of all that struggle?

Poison first. Halahala. So deadly it could end everything. Shiva had to drink it, hold it in his throat, transform it. Then came the treasures. The moon. The divine physician. The wish-fulfilling tree. The celestial elephant.

And finally, Lakshmi. Radiant, seated on a lotus, carrying abundance, beauty, grace.

That’s what Diwali celebrates at its root. Not a battle won, but a birth witnessed. When we churn our own depths, when we’re willing to face both light and shadow in ourselves, something divine shows up. Lakshmi doesn’t appear despite the mess. She appears because we were brave enough to churn it.

The poison always comes first.

We have to be willing to hold it, let it transform, before the blessings arrive. In Satya Yuga, lighting a lamp meant remembering this: abundance isn’t given. It’s earned through the courage to struggle, to integrate, to stay.

Then Treta Yuga came, and with it the story we all know. Rama returning to Ayodhya after fourteen years away. But lately I’ve been seeing it differently.

Rama’s journey wasn’t about winning. It was about something harder. He gave up his throne, not because someone forced him, but because he chose integrity over inheritance. He walked into the forest, into uncertainty, into losing everything. And there, stripped of title and palace, he found out who he actually was.

His purpose wasn’t waiting in comfort. It was waiting in exile.

He learned what dharma meant when it cost him everything. And only after all that, only then, did he come home.

Diwali in Treta Yuga is about making broken things whole again. The lamps lining Ayodhya’s streets, yes. But really, it’s about people recognizing truth when it walks back through the door. They lit those lamps to say: We see you. We’ve been waiting for this version of you. The one who knows himself.

The Ramayana is a gift. It tells us the journey home requires leaving first. Losing. Discovering. And then walking back with what you’ve learned, ready to live it. Diwali here became about return. Not from war, but from becoming.

By Dvapara Yuga, things got heavier. Darkness wasn’t vague anymore. It had shape, armies, power. Krishna killed Narakasura, freed the thousands he’d imprisoned.

But sitting here in Kali Yuga, what strikes me is how this was already pointing to what was coming. Evil was bolder now. It had kingdoms. It needed a different kind of light. One willing to act, to step in, to fight.

And Krishna gave us the Gita. Right in the middle of a battlefield, with Arjuna frozen by doubt, Krishna didn’t offer escape. He offered clarity.

You’re not separate from the divine order. You’re part of it. Do what’s yours to do. Let go of what happens next.

The Gita is the manual for being human while remembering we’re also something more. It shows us how to stay whole when the world is messy, when choices hurt, when even dharma gets blurry. Dvapara gave us Krishna. Krishna gave us the Gita. The Gita gives us a map for everything still to come.

And now… here we are. Kali Yuga.

Rahu’s age. The shadow planet, always hungry, always pulling us away from center. Astrologically, Rahu takes us from home. Scatters us across cities and time zones. Makes us forget where we came from. Fills everything with speed and noise and disconnection.

But here I am.

Sitting in front of this screen, very much a product of Rahu’s world, writing this. To you, to me, to whoever needs it. Using the very instruments that pull us apart to bring my home back. To remember my roots, my stories, the ground I came from. Lighting a lamp in the digital dark to say: I still remember.

That matters to me.

Because the demons now? They’re not out there. They’re in here. In the envy, the fear, the constant wanting. In how we’ve learned to run from quiet, from stillness, from sitting with ourselves.

Families are smaller. We’re far from the soil we grew up on. The noise never stops.

But every Diwali, something pulls us back.

When I light my lamp this year, I’m not fighting a war. I’m not welcoming a king home. I’m not watching treasure rise from the ocean. I’m doing something quieter. Something that feels almost rebellious.

I’m choosing to remember.

Each yuga taught us something. In Satya Yuga, light comes from the struggle. Churning brings poison and nectar both, and we have to hold both. In Treta Yuga, coming home means leaving first. Finding yourself. Walking back with what you’ve learned. Integrity is a long walk. In Dvapara Yuga, when darkness takes real form, we act. And the Gita becomes our compass for living as humans who are also instruments of something cosmic, something divine.

In Kali Yuga, we have to remember.

Keep the flame going when everything asks us to forget. Use even Rahu’s tools to rebuild what they’re meant to break. Carry home inside us, no matter how far we wander, how lost we get.

So this is what Diwali brings us. All of us trying to navigate this age.

The light still knows the way home. Even when we’ve forgotten the stories, even when family is scattered, even when the screen glows brighter than any diya. The essence is still here.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s everything.

Churn the depths. Hold the poison. Walk the long road back. Act when it’s time. And remember, keep remembering, we carry the light with us.

That’s what I’m celebrating. Not the fireworks or the sweets. Just this small, stubborn act of remembering who we are. Lighting one lamp against everything that wants us to forget.

Happy Diwali.

May you find your way home. Again, and again, and again.

Thank you for staying through the end.

Love,

Jyo