Vikrama New Year lights up Jakarta

JAKARTA (JP): Celebrations of the five-day Hindu Diwali festival, also known as the Feast of Lights, started yesterday in a low-key fashion in Jakarta.

While Jakarta's Hindus usually celebrate the festival, which marks the Vikrama-calender New Year, at home, an Indian restaurant in the city's center is opening the celebrations to the public for the first time.

During the festival, small oil-filled earthenware lamps will be lit and placed in rows along the walls of temples and houses and floated along rivers and streams. In Hindu tradition, lamps were originally lit to guide the deity, Rama, home after his 14 years in exile.

Diwali is also known as the "festival of sweets", because Hindus usually give and receive sweets throughout the festival.