National Poetry Day, Diwali

Liz Brownlee ♦ October 1, 2015 ♦ Leave a comment

National Poetry Day is only one week away!

This is film number 12 in my series where people whose ways of life or jobs contain light, read poems incorporating light.

Hindu people all over the world celebrate Diwali, a five day festival of lights in October or November, at the start of the Indian business year.

Diwali means ‘rows of lighted lamps’. The lamps are lit to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, into people’s homes.

Rangoli art, mentioned in the poem in the film, are patterns drawn on the floor – sweets and dried fruits are exchanged as gifts, lights decorate homes and sparklers and firework displays help celebrate the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance.

Of course a festival of lights could not be left out of a series of poems celebrating light!

Vaishnavi Pikka Brassey reads a poem about Diwali written by Debjani Chatterjee.

She also reads a traditional Hindi nursery rhyme in the original Hindi, transliterated by Debjani Chatterjee, with the translation by Debjani underneath.

Thank you to Vaishnavi for her beautiful reading and allowing us to film her altar to Lakshmi and her own Guru.

Thank you also to Debjani Chatterjee for providing what I thought might be impossible – poems in Hindi about Diwali, which were also translated into English!

Diwali © Debjani Chatterjee

Filmed on Location in Bristol

Film by Chew Valley Films