If you’re down and out and feel really hurt, very little can cheer you up as much as the blast of the salty sea air on your face, or the endless horizon stretching into the deep where your thoughts turn into charred flax and disappear.

Or maybe that’s just me!

The sea may be treacherously beautiful, but on a Diwali night, when fireworks explode overhead into a thousand stars, the sky is equally so, the bellowing smoke notwithstanding.

Attending the Diwali Night in Mombasa at Mombasa Sports Club left a lasting impression, not just from the beautiful fireworks display by Jay pyrotechnics, but the cultural experience was once in a lifetime.

The food, curry! I’ve never tasted anything so delicious! The music, like honey over thunder, came from the singing duo, Sandeep and Nisha. And then there was Ruth Belly Dancer, with a waist so tiny her saree seemed to struggle to keep up whenever she twitched and turned like a golden serpent.

“Loh! Mwanadada ako sawa kabisa!” Was Jimmy’s comment as he wolfed down a samosa, marveling at the spectacle on the stage. The entire crowd had gone berserk by then, all over two thousand on their feet, bubbling with every whine of the waist.

Even as the night drew to a close with DJ Mish serenading the crowd with Hindu electronic dance music, the fireworks kept exploding despite the pleas of the organizers that the license to display had expired.

I promised myself a second taste of curry the following year. Perhaps such nights come once in a lifetime, but if luck allows, who wouldn’t reach for a second helping?