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The Last Lantern
Diwali in our village was simply nothing but the oil merchant’s bungalow would be as bright as the full moon. Sethji would hang a thousand lights for twenty years. Others from other villages would simply come and witness the golden glow on brassware and silk curtains.
Sethji’s boy Rakesh was in charge this year. “One thousand is routine,” he declared. “Let us try two thousand this year!” His mother agreed as well, hands slap wildly together. Servants worked day and night for days in advance polishing lamps, placing them out in lavish patterns, filling each lamp with costly oil.
Night had fallen with servants resting in candlelight and an old widow coming to their gate at night. She shivered in her voice. “My grandson has fever. The vaidya told me to rub mustard oil on him to cure him. I’ve done all around.”
Rakesh’s mother did not even raise her head when he switched on lights. “Not now, woman! Can’t you see that we are utilizing every drop?” She chased away the widow like a beggar dog.
Twenty hundred lights twinkled in rows that evening. Oohs and aahs whispered softly by the crowd. There was a light, however, outside the rest on Beggar’s Hill hut. The widow had bounded herbs into her final teaspoonful of oil, iced a broken lamp with it, and breathed prayers over her grandson.