Small rituals can ease homesickness and build belonging, even a flight away from home.
- Diwali lands on Sunday, November 8, inside the UAE weekend
- Research links diaspora festivals with feeling at home and less loneliness
- Indians are the UAE’s largest expatriate community, so celebrate together
- Small rituals like a diya, a call or a meal count
The first diya of the season is the hardest to light. Not because of the flame, but because of the silence around it: no cousins arguing over rangoli, no aunt calling from the kitchen, no neighbour knocking with a box of mithai. Diwali away from home carries an ache. It also carries something quieter and more useful than most people expect.
Walk through Karama or Bur Dubai in the week before Diwali and the signs are hard to miss. Marigold garlands hang in shop doorways. Sweet shops stack boxes of kaju katli to the ceiling. Fairy lights appear on balconies that stayed dark all year. Indians are the largest expatriate community in the UAE, and organisers expected more than 60,000 people at a single Diwali gathering in Zabeel Park last year. The city is ready. The question is whether you are.
Diwali is not a public holiday here, but this year it lands on a Sunday, inside the weekend for most residents. The five days run from Dhanteras on Friday, November 6 to Bhai Dooj on Tuesday, November 10, with Lakshmi Puja on the evening of the 8th. No leave needed. Still, plenty of people will spend it quietly, a phone in one hand and a group chat full of photos from home in the other.
Think about what a festival actually is. Light, food, music, a dress code and a crowd who all know the words. Researchers who study migrant communities keep finding that these ingredients do something specific. A 2024 study of diaspora festival visitors identified five main emotions: happiness, pride, excitement, feeling at home and feeling not lonely. The last two were unique to diaspora festivals. Separate research on a festival in Stockholm suggests that taking part in your own community’s celebrations can ease the homesickness and nostalgia that come with living abroad. That matters.
A festival is not a cure, and homesickness is not a problem you fix with a string of lights. Some years the ache will still arrive. That is allowed. But rituals give it somewhere to go. Ghee warming in a pan, the scratch of a matchstick, the first diya catching: these are small, physical, repeatable things, and they tell your body what day it is when the calendar says Sunday. If the season feels heavier than a festival can hold, speak to a doctor, a counsellor or a friend you trust.
How to Celebrate Diwali When Family Is Far Away
You do not need a full house. You need a few anchors.
- Light something. A diya on the balcony, or an LED tealight if your building restricts open flames. Check your community rules first. For fireworks, public displays are a better choice than private ones. Last year’s official shows ran at Al Seef and Global Village, so watch for this year’s programme.
- Make or plate one dish. A homemade ladoo, or shop-bought mithai set out properly on your best plate. Presentation is part of the ritual.
- Show up somewhere. The Hindu Temple in Jebel Ali manages visits through QR-code bookings, and BAPS Hindu Mandir in Abu Dhabi asks visitors to register and carry ID. Book early.
- Share it. Hand a box of mithai to a colleague or neighbour and explain what the lights mean. Diwali travels well, and explaining it makes you feel less like a guest in this city and more like part of it.
Diwali begins this Friday and peaks on Sunday. You do not need a full house to make it count, only a flame, a plate and one person to share it with. Light the diya. Make the call!
