Diwali in India during the pandemic
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For Hindus, Sikhs and Jains it's Diwali - the festival of lights. But this year there's the pandemic. What impact is that having in India, asks Rajini Vaidyanathan in Delhi. In Azerbaijan, the decades-long intermittent war with Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh flared up again in September. Earlier this week, Russia brokered a deal to end the conflict. Olga Ivshina has just returned from the Azeri side of the frontline, where reporters' safety was not just threatened by shelling. The French Caribbean island of Martinique has a difficult relationship with its past. For about two hundred years the colony relied on enslaved Africans to work in its sugar cane plantations. Some think that period might have been shorter if it hadn't been for Josephine, the wife of Napoleon. And as Tim Whewell found, that's not the only sensitive subject of conversation on the island. Bicycles have been recommended as a safe form of transport in the pandemic, and cities around Europe have been improving their cycling infrastructure as a result. Anna Holligan lives in the Netherlands, where cycling is second nature to many, and says that even there, more people are now switching to two wheels. On Mosher Island off the coast of Canada’s Nova Scotia province, self-isolation takes on a different meaning. No need to worry about social distancing, there is no one to keep a distance from. The island only has two residents, a former lighthouse keeper and his wife. Greg Mercer paid them a visit.
Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.6 | Good morning. |
| 0:05.8 | Today, a short violent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, |
| 0:10.4 | and now there's a peace deal. |
| 0:12.3 | We hear from an Azeri town. On the French |
| 0:15.6 | Caribbean island of Martinique slavery and toxic pesticides have left their scars |
| 0:21.2 | but we hear Napoleon's wife Josephine played a role as well. |
| 0:26.7 | The Netherlands have been extolling the virtues of two-wheel travel for a long time, but the |
| 0:32.0 | pandemic has increased the popularity of the bicycle even more. |
| 0:37.0 | And self-isolation, we have a very different kind involving life on an island of Nova Scotia on Canada's Atlantic coast as we pay a visit to its residents, all two of them. |
| 0:50.0 | First to India, where they're facing the dilemma of how to deal with their greatest annual festival, |
| 0:57.0 | Duali. Like Christmas, it's a time to decorate your home with lights, exchange gifts, visit relatives. It's also a favorite time for |
| 1:06.1 | weddings. But of course there's the pandemic. A perfect storm for spreading the virus, |
| 1:12.2 | asks Regina |
| 1:13.3 | Vajanartan in Delhi. |
| 1:15.3 | For a moment it felt like I'd stepped back in time. |
| 1:19.3 | The entrance to the plush ballroom at a five-star hotel was bedecked with floral |
| 1:24.4 | decorations, long garlands in orange and cream draped from the ceiling as guests |
| 1:29.5 | entered a longer red carpet. The smell of fresh carnations, the sight of flickering candles, and then the sound |
| 1:38.5 | of the squirt of hand sanitizer. Nothing's completely normal in these times, but as India enters an |
| 1:45.0 | auspicious time of year with a multitude of religious festivals and peak wedding |
| 1:49.7 | season about to begin, people are trying to carry on as best as they can. The weddings |
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