Diwali, more flash than fireworks and more bang for the borrowed buck?

Some people light a diya to dispel darkness. Others light it to improve their engagement rate.

I know the drill. I’ve photographed a meal before eating it and moved a bowl two inches because the light was better there. I’ve also zoomed in on strangers’ festive living rooms. Was that Italian marble? Solid brass? And was that a second living room? Meanwhile, mine had the audacity to look lived in.

The point is not that posting a photograph is a crime against civilisation. It is that the camera has quietly acquired editorial control. We arrange the evening for the image, then inhabit whatever remains. The experience and its proof have become difficult to separate. If the moment was lovely but nobody saw it, does it still count? And if a hundred people approve of the picture, must we pretend the evening was lovely?

The annual parade of prosperity is where the joke gets expensive. The Sharmas have a new car; the Bhatias have a modular kitchen; the Khannas’ necklace could be spotted from a passing aircraft. Your family has bought a pressure cooker. Sensible, useful, built to last, and socially invisible.

There is nothing wrong with wanting nice things. The exhaustion begins when every nice thing becomes a referendum on your standing. The car is no longer just transport; it is a message to the neighbour. The sofa must compete with a stranger’s living room. The phone works perfectly well, but it is two models old, which in the court of public opinion is practically a disability.

Being affluent and looking affluent are different occupations. One accumulates assets; the other accumulates monthly payments.

The EMI never appears in the photograph. Nor does the domestic negotiation that preceded the purchase, or the credit card bill waiting behind the festive filter. Two families can admire each other’s outward prosperity while financing it at punishing interest. The bank, which has no need to like or follow either family, is better placed to judge.

Instagram did not invent this competition. Our parents compared gold, scooters, curtains and television sets long before the internet arrived. The old neighbourhood had its own pecking order; it simply lacked a search bar. What has changed is the scale. The Sharmas’ holiday, a stranger’s walk-in wardrobe and an influencer’s Miele kitchen can all land in the same morning scroll. Envy no longer needs to wait for a Diwali invitation. The algorithm may know nothing about affection, but it knows exactly how long you linger over somebody else’s chandelier.

And where there is envy, there is a market. Diwali has always brought shopping with it: new clothes, gifts, sweets, utensils, gold. Buying something for someone can express affection, habit, faith or hope. The modern sales pitch goes further. It sells not just a product but the promise of a better, more enviable self. This perfume will make you desirable; this phone will make your memories worth keeping; this makeover will make you the sort of person who hosts effortlessly.

A festival associated with renewal is a marketer’s dream. Why begin again with a prayer when you can begin again with a wardrobe refresh and a limited period offer? The purchase arrives in a box. Contentment, somehow, remains on back order.

The deeper irony is that the market profits from the feeling that we are not quite enough, then sells us objects to close the gap. The objects may be lovely; the gap keeps moving. A new phone becomes old, the neighbour changes cars, and the sofa that looked luxurious last Diwali has been demoted by an algorithm. We call this aspiration. Sometimes it is simply insecurity with a shopping bag.

None of this makes Diwali fake. Its meanings vary across India’s communities and regions. For many Hindus, the festival recalls Rama’s return to Ayodhya; in other homes, Lakshmi worship and other traditions shape the celebration. Lamps, prayers, food, family and gifts carry meanings no platform can manufacture. Commerce has not erased the festival. It has simply found a way to sit at the table and serve itself the largest portion.

The awkward question is what happens when display starts dictating the celebration. A photograph of charity may draw attention to a cause, or turn another person’s hardship into a prop. A family picture can preserve affection, or demand that affection perform on cue. The same act can be sincere and self-conscious. Humans are perfectly capable of mixed motives; social media merely gives them a ring light.

Perhaps the most revealing part of the Diwali post is what it leaves out: the bill, the bickering, the tired person behind the camera, the relative who came because the invitation mattered more than the décor. None of this fits the polished story of abundance. Yet real life has always been untidy. Festivals are made of interruptions as much as rituals: burnt snacks, old jokes, prayers mumbled by someone checking the time, a box of mithai quietly disappearing.

I will probably post a photograph. I’d like to claim otherwise, but virtue is much easier when nobody is watching. Still, I might let the evening get on with itself before asking it to prove it happened.

The phone can have a picture. It need not have the final word.