Karthikai Deepam is a Hindu festival celebrated on the fifteenth lunar day of the month of Kartik (November–December). This year it falls on today, November 23rd.

The festival is celebrated at night by decorating various parts of the house and balcony with oil lamps. These days some use candles too. It is beautiful to look at the neighbourhood in Tamil Nadu, India after 6:30 PM. Stairs, walls and windows of every house can be seen as an ocean of light.

The following images show some example decorations (the images are from Google image search):

Last year, on this same day (Nov 23) I published my first book ‘The Truth About Spiritual Enlightenment: Bridging Science, Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta‘. (But last year Karthigai Deepam fell on Dec 2, 2017). So, it has been exactly one year since the book was made live! The book is doing quite well and I thank all the readers who bought this book for  supporting. 🙂

I am working on another book titled ‘The Story of God: A History of World Religions and Spiritual Enlightenment‘. This book is going to be a long term project and it is going to present the history of spirituality as accurately as possible. I am going to adopt a pure historical method. This book is not just going to be a history book, but a guide to spiritual enlightenment from a historical perspective. I am pretty sure that this book will give a totally new and fresh outlook on the past. I think it may take another year (or two, if necessary) to complete it.

I wish everyone a happy Karthikai deepam!