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Delhi at this time of the year becomes a carnival of lights. The anticipation of Diwali becomes apparent in the millions of tiny LED lights hung from balconies of apartments, terraces of daytime offices, walls of messy rooms occupied by lazy university students, and on jalebi extensions, enacted temporarily to cater to the festive demand, in front of permanent sweet shops that sell Kinder Joy from glass shelves. Some days, in Delhi, on autorickshaws, you can smell this light in the autumn wind, collectively emitted by millions of LED bulbs across the city. The autumn wind has many smells. Years ago, on autumn mornings in my school’s prayer ground, the Night Jasmines wouldn’t let some of us pray, because every breeze would bring with it a confusing nostalgia. It would come as a longing for a blue sea and leave a dry sadness in the throat. That was before I was diagnosed with a recurring throat allergy.

Some days, the autumn wind smells of fireflies in paddy fields at dusk. I, of course, haven’t seen fireflies in Delhi. I think I might find some in the ridge that runs through the city, if I go at night; or at the hillock that I sometimes visit with my friends, at the base of which, in afternoons and mornings, men and women shit in circles, under noises of aeroplanes above them, descending towards the airport that borders the ridge. Diwali in Delhi reminds one of the fireflies. Captured. Tied to strips of plastic, Hung from buildings. Sometimes it also reminds one of glowing glass jars; of diyas on wooden tripods at dusks of Kati Bihu.

And now that I am home, now that the fireflies, the night Jasmines, and the earthly smell at dusk, all of it is present here, the autumn wind once again smells of LED lights wound around trees by the streets of a city I have left.