On the evening of Tuesday, 24 November 2026, a fire will be lit on top of a mountain in Tamil Nadu, the finale of a ten-day temple festival at Thiruvannamalai, when homes across the Tamil country answer with rows of lamps. This is Karthigai Deepam, the festival of lights of the South, older than memory, and often called the Tamil festival of lights.
The fire on Arunachala
The heart of Karthigai Deepam beats at Thiruvannamalai, where the holy hill Arunachala rises above the vast Arunachaleswarar temple. Tradition holds that here, Lord Shiva appeared as an endless pillar of light to settle a dispute between Brahma and Vishnu over who was greater. Neither could find the flame's beginning or its end. The lesson: the Divine has no top and no bottom, no start and no finish. It simply is.
On the final evening of the festival, the Bharani Deepam is lit inside the temple in the early hours, and as dusk falls, a great cauldron of ghee and camphor is carried to the summit, 2,668 feet up, and set ablaze. The beacon can be seen for miles. Below, lakhs of devotees who have walked the 14-kilometre Girivalam path around the hill through the day stand shoulder to shoulder, crying "Annamalaiyarukku Arohara," as the flame answers the sky.
Lamps in every home
Across Tamil Nadu, and in Tamil homes from Sri Lanka to Singapore, families light rows of agal vilakku, the small clay lamps, along doorsteps, windowsills and courtyards on all the festival evenings. The lamps are lit at dusk and left to burn themselves out. Children compete to keep their flames alive the longest. Homes are cleaned, kolams are drawn fresh each morning, and sweets like appam and pori urundai are made for offering.
The Maha Karthigai Deepam beacon at Thiruvannamalai. Photo: Vinoth Chandar, CC BY 2.0
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The six faces of Murugan
The festival belongs also to Lord Murugan. Legend says six sparks from Shiva's third eye became six babies, nursed by the six Krittika stars, the Pleiades, and later joined into one six-faced child. Karthigai falls on the day the moon meets the Krittika stars in the month of Karthigai, and Murugan temples, especially the six abodes of the Lord, fill with special worship. At Thiruchendur and Palani, the day draws some of the largest crowds of the year.
More than a festival of light
Tamil poets have always read Karthigai Deepam as an instruction. The lamp outside the house is only half the ritual; the other half is the lamp inside. Lighting the vilakku at dusk is a daily rehearsal for a life in which darkness is met, each evening, with a small and stubborn flame. In many Tamil households, elders still say that a lamp lit with a clean wick, good oil and a quiet mind is a prayer that needs no words.
If you are observing this year
You do not need to be in Thiruvannamalai. Light a row of clay lamps at your doorway at dusk on 24 November. Offer appam or any sweet made at home. If you can, walk around something sacred: a hill, a temple, even the block you live on, slowly, thinking of nothing but the light. That, in the Tamil way, is Girivalam enough for one evening.
Annamalaiyarukku Arohara. May the light of Arunachala burn in your home this Karthigai Deepam.
Agal vilakku, the clay lamps of Karthigai. Photo: Thamizhpparithi Maari, CC BY-SA 3.0
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