The Extra Diya
Nobody Talks About
Every Diwali, someone lights one more diya than the house needs. A short story about the kids who couldn't make it home this year.
August 2026 · 4 min read
Nobody Counts the Diyas Out Loud
There's always one more diya lit than the house strictly needs — one for the doorstep, one for the balcony railing, and one extra, set a little apart, that nobody in the family ever quite explains. It's for whoever isn't home this year. Nobody says it out loud. Everybody knows anyway.
The House Gets Quieter Every Year, and That's Just What Happens
It's not a tragedy, just the ordinary shape of a family growing up and spreading out — one kid in Bangalore for work, another who flew out for a wedding this year, a grandchild who can't get leave from school abroad. The rangoli still gets drawn at the same door. It just has fewer feet walking over it than it used to.
What Actually Keeps a Parent Up on Diwali Night
It's rarely the distance itself that worries a parent — it's the specific, ordinary risk of the night: a child driving back from a relative's house on roads full of firecracker smoke and half-lit stretches, a daughter walking back from a friend's terrace party past midnight, a son who said he'd call after the fireworks and then just... didn't, because he fell asleep, because the signal dropped, because Diwali night is loud and easy to lose track of time in.
A Notification Isn't a Phone Call, and That's the Point
This year, instead of a 1 a.m. call that wakes the whole house to ask "reached?", a quiet arrival alert did the asking. The son got home, and his phone told his mother's phone before either of them had to say a word. She didn't wake up worried. She just woke up, checked, and went back to sleep. The extra diya was still there in the morning, still lit for whoever wasn't home — but for everyone who was traveling, at least there was one less unanswered question hanging over the night.
It Doesn't Fill the Empty Chair. It Just Makes the Night Easier to Get Through.
Nothing makes up for the seat at the table that stays empty because someone couldn't get the flight, couldn't get the leave, couldn't make it back this year. That ache is real, and no notification touches it. But the smaller ache — not knowing if everyone who did travel got home safe through a chaotic, crowded, firecracker-loud night — that one, at least, doesn't have to sit with the family until morning anymore.