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Bhai Dooj: Traditions, Rituals and Gift Ideas for the Last Day of Diwali

Bhai Dooj: Traditions, Rituals and Gift Ideas for the Last Day of Diwali

Two days after Lakshmi puja, when the lamps are still up and the sweets are half finished, Diwali ends with the quietest of its five days. Bhai Dooj is a ceremony between sisters and brothers: a tilak, an aarti, a meal, a gift. It has none of the noise of Diwali night and all of its warmth. For many people it is the day they remember best from childhood: a sister’s thumb pressing kumkum onto a forehead, and an envelope passed across a plate of food.

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Rangoli Designs Explained: History, Regional Styles and What the Patterns Mean

Rangoli Designs Explained: History, Regional Styles and What the Patterns Mean

Every morning across much of India, someone bends at a doorway and draws a pattern on the ground in rice flour or coloured powder. By evening the milkman, the school bus rush and the neighbour’s scooter have scuffed it; the next morning it is drawn again. At Diwali the pattern gets bigger and brighter and is lit with diyas, but the habit behind it is old, and it is daily.

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Premium Diwali Gifts Above ₹2,000 for the People Who Matter Most

Premium Diwali Gifts Above ₹2,000 for the People Who Matter Most

Once a Diwali gift goes past ₹2,000, it is no longer just a courtesy. It tells the person they matter to you. That makes it worth getting right, and it also happens to be the price range where sellers charge the most for the least.

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Lakshmi Puja Step by Step: A Guide for First Timers

Lakshmi Puja Step by Step: A Guide for First Timers

Maybe this is your first Diwali in a new flat in another city. Maybe the person who always led the puja, a grandmother or a father, is not there this year. Either way, if you are the one sitting in front of the altar for the first time, this guide is for you. It walks through the household Lakshmi-Ganesh puja in the order most north Indian families follow, explains what each step is for, and tells you what to do when you do not know the Sanskrit.

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Lakshmi Puja Preparation Checklist: Everything You Need Before the Evening

Lakshmi Puja Preparation Checklist: Everything You Need Before the Evening

Lakshmi puja comes once a year, on one evening, inside a window of an hour or two. That is exactly the sort of occasion where something is always missing, and you only notice at 6.45 pm, when the kirana store has pulled its shutter down and the flower seller has gone home.

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Eco-Friendly Diwali: 15 Ways to Celebrate Fully With Less Waste and Less Smoke

Eco-Friendly Diwali: 15 Ways to Celebrate Fully With Less Waste and Less Smoke

An eco-friendly Diwali is not a smaller or duller Diwali. Most of the festival’s traditions are already low-waste: clay lamps, flower garlands, rice-flour rangoli, sweets made at home and shared with neighbours. The waste came later, with plastic decorations, foam packaging, disposable everything, and fireworks that leave the air unbreathable for a week.

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Easy Rangoli Designs for Beginners: Step by Step, With Materials

Easy Rangoli Designs for Beginners: Step by Step, With Materials

A rangoli looks harder than it is. The huge ones outside temples and in housing-society competitions are drawn by people with decades of practice. Yours only needs to be neat, symmetrical and lit, and any of the five designs below gets you there in under an hour, even if the last thing you drew was a map in a Class 8 geography exam.

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Diwali Torans, Wall Hangings and Entrance Decor: What Goes Where and Why

Diwali Torans, Wall Hangings and Entrance Decor: What Goes Where and Why

Diwali starts at the front door. Before a single diya is lit inside, the doorway is swept, washed, decorated and made welcoming. The idea at the heart of the festival is that Lakshmi visits homes on the new-moon night and comes into the ones that are ready for her.

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Diwali Safety Guide: Diyas, Candles, Electrical Lights, Fireworks, Children and Pets

Diwali Safety Guide: Diyas, Candles, Electrical Lights, Fireworks, Children and Pets

Burns, eye injuries and breathing trouble from smoke are a grimly familiar part of Diwali week in emergency wards from Delhi to Chennai. Most of them start with something small: a dupatta brushing a diya, a child leaning over a sparkler, a string of lights plugged into an overloaded extension board. A few habits prevent most of it, and most of those habits take less than a minute.

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Setting Up a Diwali Puja Thali: Every Item and What It Is For

Setting Up a Diwali Puja Thali: Every Item and What It Is For

The thali is the whole puja in miniature. Every offering passes across it, and the aarti at the end is done with it. Laying it out is a small ritual of its own, and once you know what each item is for, the puja stops feeling like a list someone’s mother dictated over the phone and starts feeling like what it is.

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