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Good morning. Every year during Diwali there is long queue at my local Indian sweet shop. On this day, families exchange sweets and catch up over a tasty home cooked meal. On one occasion, a family member joined a Diwali gathering over a video call.
Today we can communicate at the click of a button – but 100 years ago this wasn’t an option during the Great War when Indian soldiers wrote emotional letters home to their families. In one such letter, Jemadar Man Singh writes:
‘This is the fourth Diwali festival since I left India. The state of things in India and France is very different. The chief difference is that in India tonight everyone will assemble in his house with his wife, children and will have an excellent meal and be full of rejoicing. Here we see the very opposite. Everyone is separated from his kith and kin, thousands of miles away in a foreign country. Yet, thanks to God, I am fit and well and have everything I want, and there is only one worry - separation from you.’
This gives us insight into how the men felt, being so far from home but what of the women and families left behind?
In her lament to her husband of a few days, a newlywed bride expresses her anguish and pleads with her husband not to go to war: 
‘May you never be enlisted, you who has left me crying, write my name amongst the widows, you who are off to Basra’.
Our loved ones are our support, and at times of separation, we draw strength from our memories of them.  Let us be grateful for the time we have with our families and friends and do our best to make that time special.