Vikrama New Year lights up Jakarta

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.