Saturday the 21st was an interesting day. It started, as do most good Saturdays, with brunch at the Golden Pita.

It turns out that it was Diwali, a major Indian holiday. Diwali celebrates the return of the avatar Ram from a 14-year exile during which he vanquished the demon king Ravana, who had stolen his wife Sita. Assisting him in this endeavour was his brother Lakshman and an army of monkeys led by Hanuman, the monkey god.

One of my brunch buddies, not entirely coincidentally, is named Ram. But this Ram isn't in exile and he doesn't have a wife who'd been stolen. He doesn't even have a brother named Lakshman. However, on some Saturdays, he has been known to hang around with a fellow who looks a bit like a monkey.

Anyhow, this perhaps more mortal Ram has established a personal Diwali tradition of having a small gathering for dinner and for generally having a good time. I'd been invited, and our plans were finalized at brunch.

Brunch ran fairly late into the afternoon, and I was left with a few hours to kill before heading to my friends' place. Since I had my camera in the car, I headed over to the nearby Burnaby Lake. There are generally a few good birds hanging out there.

This day was no exception. I found several drake breeding-plumaged Hooded Mergansers out at the end of the boardwalk. The sun had already gotten fairly low, giving good low-level lighting on them, and turning the water a nice shade of blue. It also meant that there'd be good reflections in the water.

Male Hoodies are pretty neat-looking ducks.

And here's a shot of one swimming away from me. The black line down the back of the head always strikes me as funny for some reason. These are ducks that are quite dignified from the side, but a little goofy from the back.

That was about it from the lake; there were some other birds around, such as Wood Ducks, Rock Doves, and Mallards, but I wasn't particularly inclined to take photos of them this day.

I headed on home to get ready for the evening, but when I got there my pal Zippy was waiting for me, and I couldn't resist taking a few close portraits of him.

But I suddenly realized that if the food was not available for photography, it was probably not available for placing into my mouth, either. So I put my camera down and got some food while the getting was good.

Actually, I needn't have worried; there was plenty of food. But it would've been odd if I hadn't sat and eaten with everyone else.

Not that I'm not odd, mind you.

After dinner, we proceded with some traditional Diwali card-playing. One legend has it that the god Shiva and goddess Parvati played dice on Diwali, and Parvati enjoyed it so much that she declared that anyone who gambled on Diwali would have good fortune in the coming year.

We put the cards away after an hour, and then sat around talking and watching some Anglo-Indian television comedy. It was a great time.

Another Diwali tradition is lighting candles; Diwali is often called the festival of lights. Ram had plenty of candles lit at his place, and at one or two points in the evening I took photos of some of them. It's therefore fitting that I leave you with several shots of Diwali candles.