Walk down Serangoon Road most years between September and November and you’ll find the street already strung with arches of light, weeks before the date on the calendar that they’re actually for. A festive bazaar fills in around Campbell Lane and Hastings Road alongside it, with garlands, oil lamps, sweets, pooja items. Most people walking through, residents and visitors both, see the lights, take a photo, and move on, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do with a nicely lit street. It’s also the easiest way to miss what the display is actually marking.
Deepavali itself falls on Sunday 8 November this year, with Monday 9 November as the observed public holiday. The light-up and the bazaar that run for weeks beforehand mark the lead-up to that specific date and meaning, the triumph of light over darkness, observed in Singapore by the Indian community. A street full of lights photographs well regardless of whether the person looking at it knows what it signifies, but it takes on a completely different meaning once they do.
Little India is one of the most-photographed streets in Singapore every year around this time, which makes it easy to assume it’s also one of the best-understood. A light-up photographed without context is just a pretty and well-lit street. The same street, walked with someone who can explain why a specific date matters to the community that’s been building a life around that district for generations, is a different experience of the same place entirely.
Serai’s walk through Little India covers the ground the light-up draws people to: Tekka Centre, Race Course Road, the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, the layered history of a community that built a home for itself. Walking it in the weeks the street is lit for Deepavali lets you see the display with someone who can explain the layered reasons a street gets lit up like this every year, a different experience from framing a nice photo and moving on. Book the Little India walk for a date in the run-up to Deepavali, or get in touch if you’d like to time it around the light-up specifically.
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