Light Doesn’t Need Permission To Travel

By Jivika Vikamshi

They announced the winners on a rainy London evening, under the harsh white lights of the auditorium. It wasn’t us. We, the last all-woman team in the hackathon finals, clapped politely for the champions, trying to swallow our disappointment. The room hummed with forced laughter and the dregs of adrenaline- empty coffee cups, crumpled notes, and half-erased equations still scattered at our table. I forced a smile, but inside I felt hollow and exhausted.

That’s when my phone buzzed. I almost ignored it. It had been a long day of pitching and rehearsing, a long week of no sleep. My eyes burned, and my shoulders ached from the weight of pretending to be fine.

But the preview on the lock screen made me pause.“Only for you, my one and only Chaksu.”

I froze. Chaksu- that’s what Maa calls me. It means eyes, though she says it as if it means everything I see the world through. I opened the message. And for a moment, the entire auditorium dissolved.

There on my screen was a photograph of our living room floor transformed- rings of marigold and mango leaves, diyas flickering like little heartbeats, light rippling across the marble. A mandala so intricate, it could have been mistaken for sacred architecture. Circles folding into circles, each one more precise than the last. The symmetry was hypnotic. It looked less like decoration and more like revelation.

A message followed beneath the image: “You asked me to gift you a mandala, Chaksu. Made it for you.” I blinked, stunned. I had told her that a few days ago -half playfully, half serious when we were talking about my upcoming birthday. “Just make a small painting for me,” I’d said. “A mandala or something simple.” She laughed. “I’m too tired for all that, beta. Next year, I’ll try.” Still, I teased her, “Oh come on, just make a tiny one for me if you can. I am asking you to give me something you are wonderful at.” I never expected her to actually do it, let alone create anything of this scale. And yet here it was. She had made a universe.

It wasn’t a small painting. It was an eight-hour meditation built from petals and patience.

Later, I’d learn how it happened: how she gathered marigolds and mango leaves from the garden, how she sat cross-legged for hours on the cool tiles, how her hands trembled when the lamps first went out and she whispered to the flames, “Don’t give up now.”

She hadn’t planned any of it. Nobody helped her. My father had gone to work; the relatives had texted “Happy Diwali” and moved on. 

Mumma has always been a maker. An interior designer by profession, yes, but that title barely contains her. She’s an artist, a builder, a scientist, a chef, a healer-all rolled into one woman who somehow holds an entire universe together without ever taking credit for it. She can fix a broken switch, design a living room, cure a cold, and sketch a temple facade all in the same afternoon. She just never collected the degrees for it.

Sometimes I wonder what she might’ve become if someone had called her “brilliant” at the right time- if she’d been given the space to experiment beyond duty, the time to create for herself instead of everyone else. But life, for women like her, has a quiet way of redirecting genius. It tucks talent into service, turns art into care, invention into responsibility.

I grew up thinking every home had a woman like her: one who could build a light fixture out of spare wires, treat a fever with kitchen herbs, or balance the family accounts in the margins of an old recipe book. 

But even as a child, I noticed something different about her rhythm- it was as if she carried an entire laboratory inside her mind.  Once, when I was brainstorming something for a science competition, she spent the entire night sketching something no textbook had ever suggested: a solar sieve system made from discarded foil and mesh. She didn’t just guide me with the design, she reimagined the problem. The next day, when my teacher called it “genius,” I remember looking at Maa, who only smiled and said, “It’s nothing, just common sense.” That line has haunted me for years. Because what if “common sense” in her world is actually suppressed genius in disguise? Except it wasn’t common sense. It was something else- some kind of tenth sense that allowed her to see beauty where others saw the ordinary, to design possibilities out of scraps and silence. Oh,by the way, that went on to win a National Award with a patent.  So, yes that’s mumma.

That night, something in her stirred and refused to stay small. With no one watching, no one instructing, she let her long-buried artistry spill across the floor. She built a cosmos out of humble things that would wilt by morning- not to prove anything, not because someone had asked, but because creation had finally called her name again.

It wasn’t recognition that awakened her; it was remembrance. The mandala was not a response to being seen, but a revelation of how deeply she had always seen herself. I used to think people created because they were inspired by others. Now I think they create when they rediscover the pulse that was always beating beneath the noise.

My mother didn’t become creative that night; she simply stopped hiding from her own light. When a woman who has spent years holding worlds together finally turns inward, something ancient rises through her hands - an energy that does not ask for applause, only space to exist.

To everyone else in the house, it was just decoration. Another Diwali, another floor covered in flowers. They walked past it with polite indifference, a few even remarking, “Nice work,” without looking closely. No one asked how long it took, or why her hands were trembling from hours of kneeling. Maybe they saw it; maybe they chose not to. In our family, brilliance in women has always been expected, but rarely acknowledged.Perhaps that’s how patriarchy survives by calling a woman’s art “just a hobby,” by mistaking devotion for duty. They saw the pattern, but not the person. They saw worship and labeled it housekeeping. Except for pappa. He was super proud of his woman.

But sitting in that emptying auditorium, I saw everything. The hackathon chaos around me faded as I stared at her mandala, and a sense of warmth and wonder took its place. At that moment it didn’t matter that we were thousands of miles apart. It didn’t even matter that my team had lost. I felt an unmistakable connection flare to life across our distance. It was as if those dozens of little lamps she lit had traveled across the world, straight through my phone screen, to illuminate the quiet ache in my chest. The distance between us fell away; her intention, her love, reached me without any obstacle. Light doesn’t need permission to travel and neither does love.

As I gazed at the photo, I began to see layers of meaning woven into its geometry. I saw more than an arrangement of petals and flames, I saw a message. The mandala was a meditation on impermanence and continuity, on what it means to create knowing that nothing lasts. The fresh marigold blossoms would dry and curl up by dawn; the bright oil lamps would sputter out and leave only wisps of smoke. And yet here it was - a burst of beauty in defiance of decay. I imagined my mother pondering the cycles of life and death with each leaf she placed. Every ring of green was like a life coming full circle, returning to where it began; every flickering flame was a soul finding its way home. The design on the floor was spiritual geometry- a prayer made of flowers and light, offered with open hands.

All the while, I had been in London chasing innovation, thinking the pinnacle of creation lay in algorithms and pitch decks. We had tried to build something groundbreaking in that hall of bright young minds. But in the end we came away empty-handed, our code and ideas momentarily lost to disappointment. And yet here was my mother, in the privacy of our home, achieving something quietly groundbreaking in her own way.

She had done what all our technology aspired to do: create connection out of absence, spark hope in the midst of defeat. In a single evening, using flowers, leaves, and her own faith, she bridged a gap between us that no video call or social network ever could. That was her invention- a gentle kind of innovation that didn’t win any trophy, but which profoundly moved its only intended audience: me.

That night, after the ceremony, I walked alone through the drizzling London streets back to my dorm, the image of her mandala still dancing in my mind. I was quiet,  still wrapped in the glow of what I had witnessed. I realized I had received two educations that day: one in loss, and one in love and creativity.

Back home, Maa must have finally stretched her aching legs and gone to bed. By the time the sun rose over her creation, the marigold petals had begun to brown and crinkle, the oil in the lamps had burned away, and the flames had died in their little clay bowls. The beautiful mandala was already beginning to fade. Pappa told me later that when he woke at dawn, he found her asleep on the sofa nearby, as if she couldn’t bear to leave her artwork unattended. The living room still smelled of lamp oil and crushed leaves- the perfume of effort turned holy.

When my mother finally got up that morning, she swept away the dried petals and soot, clearing the floor for the day’s usual foot traffic. By lunchtime, there was no physical trace that such a mandala had ever existed. But something lingered in that house, something quiet and profound. He said she looked different- tired, yes, but peaceful. It was as if, in creating that one ephemeral piece of art, she had recovered a part of herself. There was light in her eyes, he told me. And of course there was- she’d always carried that light, and now someone had witnessed it. 

In the end, nothing my mother made that night survived beyond dawn. And yet it remains one of the most beautiful creations I have ever seen. Maybe the fact that it didn’t last- that it was a pure, momentary gift of creation and recognition- is exactly what made it art.

We didn’t win the hackathon, but I felt as though I had witnessed a different kind of victory. In a world full of code and concrete, my mother built a house of leaves and light, and invited me in. I stepped inside, and I will carry its warmth with me forever.

Happy freaking Diwali, indeed. 

By Jivika Vikamshi