"Bringing Back the Diyas: How My Generation Almost Lost Diwali's Real Meaning"

Author : uk k | Published On : 20 Aug 2026

Growing up, Diwali in our house meant one thing above everything else — my grandmother spending an entire day making rows of clay diyas, filling them with oil, and lighting every single corner of the house by hand. No fancy LED string lights, no imported decorations, just diyas, and a house that genuinely glowed.

As kids, my cousins and I found it embarrassingly old-fashioned. Our friends' houses had colourful LED lights, fancy lanterns, decorations that looked far more "Instagram-worthy" than our grandmother's simple clay diyas. We quietly begged our parents for the same, and eventually, LED lights slowly replaced diyas in our own house too.

It wasn't until my grandmother passed away, and the first Diwali without her arrived, that I truly noticed what had disappeared alongside those diyas. The house looked bright, technically, but it didn't feel the way it used to. Something quietly meaningful had been replaced by something quietly convenient.

Last year, feeling a strange pull of nostalgia, I decided to bring back at least a few real clay diyas alongside our usual lights. I read up on the real traditions and meaning behind festivals like Diwali, things I had genuinely forgotten growing up distracted by decoration trends instead of the actual significance behind them.

That Diwali felt different, in a way I hadn't expected. Lighting those few diyas, even just a handful compared to my grandmother's dozens, brought back a feeling LED lights never quite managed to replicate. My own kids now ask about "dadi's diyas" every year, a small tradition slowly finding its way back into our family.

If your own festivals have quietly become more about decoration than meaning over the years, it might be worth revisiting a few festival stories and traditions worth remembering — sometimes the old, "boring" way was the meaningful one all along.