Celebrating a world of lights

November heralds Diwali, or Deepavali – the Festival of Lights. To those who celebrate, it’s a time of joy: it marks the victory of light over darkness, of knowledge over ignorance. A time of light.

In a home in India, a woman places diya oil lamps in the doorways: a welcome to Lakshmi the goddess, the bringer of wealth and good fortune. Every flame beckons her in to bless the home. In Thailand, 27 November marks the festival of Loy Krathong. A child squats by the lake in Bangkok’s Lumpini Park, clutching a lit krathong offering. The flame lights her face. She pushes the krathong into the water and it floats away, joining a thousand of its peers, twinkling in the watery dark.

We zoom out, and up: to a street in Beijing, where electric rows of lights bedeck street stalls, and flickers of flame escape from beneath roaring woks. There’s a warmth here, in the food, the laughter, the light. Away again, to London on 5 November – Bonfire Night, when fireworks sparkle over the city’s parks and light the Thames scarlet and gold, emerald and azure. Bonfires built high seem to lap at the clouds.

Out, and up, to a Tokyo apartment building. Dark windows blink into life, as each inhabitant returns for the night. Each illuminated window is home to another set of hopes and dreams. Above them, the skyscrapers blink with a steady red pulse.

To the south, and the spectacle of the Hong Kong skyline, vivid and implausible in equal measure. Buildings forged from the sea and built up and up, proof that humanity can at least attempt to control nature. The lights of the skyline flicker with an unsynchronised glee, pushing their warmth into a cold sky.

Out, and up, into that sky. An aircraft races over the planet, its navigation lights carving a steady, stately path in green and red. From the windows of that aircraft, we look down from high, high above. We look down on thousands of lights which blur in a unified glow: people lighting diyas in doorways; offerings on lakes; bare bulbs in street stalls and warm lamps in homes; artistic light installations; fireworks over rivers and neon-laden skylines. We see the highways and ring roads, with their steady sodium- orange cast. Golden threads connect one nucleus of light to another, a network of humanity and its place on the planet.

We see from the skies that the Earth is large. Our presence is less impressive than you might expect. But in every glimmer and glow, however small or large, there lies a clear message: we are here. We did this. This is a time of light.