Okay so — I need to start this differently, because the last time I tried to write about decorating I made it sound like I knew what I was doing, and I really, really do not. Not in advance, anyway. What actually happens in my house, every single year, is this: I say I will start early. I mean it when I say it.
And then — I don’t know, life happens, work happens, the kids need something, the fridge breaks, whatever — and suddenly it is two days before Diwali and the house looks like any other Tuesday, and my cousin Meera is coming, and I am standing in the market with a list on the back of an old bill, sweating, trying to remember what I already own and what I actually need. This year I spent just under three thousand rupees. I am telling you the number up front because I get so annoyed — genuinely annoyed — at articles that say “budget-friendly!” and then never tell you a price.
As if the price is rude to mention. It is not rude. It is the whole point. So here are the numbers, and the mistakes, and the four diwali decor items that actually worked.
Four kinds. Not forty. Forty is how you end up broke and surrounded by boxes and still somehow the room looks empty.
Diwali Decor Items: Line the Room with Clay Diyas First
Diyas first. Clay diyas. Plain ones. I bought two dozen — 240 rupees, near the sabzi mandi, and yes I haggled, the man wanted 300, I got him to 240, and then I felt bad about it for the rest of the day, haggling over sixty rupees with a man selling clay lamps in the sun, I mean, who even am I.
Anyway, two dozen. I got home, I put them on the coffee table, and — nothing. I mean, they covered half the table. Half!
My neighbour Ritu was there, she had come over with tea, and she just looked at them and said, “You always buy half of everything.” And I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t, because she is right, I do this with rice, I do this with everything, I buy half and then I go back. So the next morning I went back — early, before the good stalls got picked over — and bought another two dozen, same price, plus mustard oil, 180, plus a packet of cotton wicks, 40. Forty-eight diyas total.
And that number, forty-eight, that is the number that works, because then you can do a proper row along the windowsill, not three lonely lamps with gaps between them like they are not speaking to each other, plus a cluster on the table, plus a few on the entrance steps, so people see light before they even walk in. That last part matters more than I thought it would. People arriving in the dark, seeing lit steps — it just sets the mood before anyone says a word.
Now, the thing about diyas that nobody told me until I learned it the hard way — soak them. Soak them in water for an hour before you put oil in. Because if you don’t, the clay just drinks the oil, the flame goes out early, and you are there, in front of your guests, refilling lamps like some kind of — I don’t know — lamp attendant, while everyone is sitting there politely pretending not to notice. That happened to me.
Two years ago, I think. My uncle kept looking at this one dead diya. I kept not looking at it. We both knew.
This year: bucket on the balcony, diyas having a bath, as my daughter put it — she asked, very seriously, why the lamps needed a bath, and I did not have a good answer, I just said, “So they burn longer,” which is true, but it sounds strange when you say it out loud — and they burned steady, all evening, no refills, no dead lamps, no uncle glances. Oh, and a tray. Put a tray under them on wood. I am saying this because I did not, once, and there is still, to this day, a faint oil ring on one corner of our coffee table.
Nobody else can see it. I can see it. Every day.
Tray. Please. Tray.
Add Brass Lanterns and One Tall Diya Stand
Second thing. Brass. This is where I spent the most, and also where I argued with myself the longest, in the middle of a shop, like an idiot, picking something up and putting it down. I already had two brass lanterns from last year — 900 rupees each, home store sale — and they were fine, a quick wipe, fine.
What I wanted was the tall stand. You know the kind, the stem with five or seven little bowls on it, at different heights. I found one for 1,150 rupees. And I stood there.
Ten minutes. Genuinely ten minutes, my husband standing next to me holding bags, and he finally said — he only came to carry bags, that was his whole job that day, his words — he said, “Buy it, it will last ten years.” And that argument, that specific argument, works on me every single time, it has worked for fifteen years, and he knows it, and I know he knows it, and I bought it anyway. And — ugh — he was right.
He was right and I told him so, later, very quietly, very grudgingly, because that is our dynamic and I am not changing it now. The stand went on the coffee table, but not in the middle, off to one side, because in the middle it blocks people’s faces and then everyone is leaning around it like they are trying to see past a fence, which is not festive, that is just annoying. Off to the side, the flames at different heights — that is what makes it look, I don’t know, deep? Layered?
One height looks like candles. Three heights look like a festival. I keep saying “layered” because I cannot think of a better word, and maybe there is not one.
But listen, check the joints. Before you pay. Check them. The first stand I picked up had a wobbly bowl, and the shopkeeper told me, straight face, completely straight face, that it was “handmade character.”
Handmade character! It was a loose screw. I swapped it for a steady one and did not feel even slightly bad about it. At night — main lights off, only diyas and lanterns — the brass threw this warm gold light on the walls, and I am not trying to be poetic here, I am really not, but no bulb in our house has ever done that.
My mother-in-law, who notices everything — she noticed a chipped mug in 2019 and she still brings it up, 2019! — she looked around and said, “This looks nice,” and then went back to her tea. From her, that is, I cannot overstate this, that is a standing ovation. That is five stars. That is the review I will be quoting forever.
Hang Marigold Garlands Where People Actually Look
Third. Marigolds. And the sad garland story, which I have to tell you because it is funny now, and it was not funny then, and also because it taught me the actual lesson. Four garlands, two orange, two yellow, 150 each, from a flower seller who was already packing up, and I was rushing, and I did not check them.
My fault, entirely my fault, I am not blaming the seller. One yellow garland had this soft, tired, brownish section in the middle. And I hung it up anyway. Over the doorway.
Thinking — and this is the kind of thinking that gets you into trouble — thinking, who will notice, it is high up, it is fine. Meera’s youngest noticed in five minutes. Five. He pointed up and asked, loudly, in front of everyone, why those flowers looked sad.
And I just stood there, because what do you say to that, “You are right, they are sad, thank you for noticing”? So I took it down — mid-afternoon, guests in two hours, me on a chair, taking down a garland — cut out the tired middle bit, and used the two good ends to frame the mirror. And you know what? It looked better.
It looked like I had planned it. I had not planned it. I had panicked it. But the lesson is real: put garlands where eyes go.
Doorway, yes, but also the mirror, the shelf above the sofa, the places people actually look when they walk in and sit down. Not up near the ceiling where it all blurs into a yellow smudge and you wasted 150 rupees for a smudge. Hooks, by the way — small clear hooks, 60 rupees a pack, put them up the day before so they hold. Last year I used tape.
A garland fell on my cousin’s head. During dinner. I am still hearing about it, I will hear about it forever, I have accepted this. This year nothing fell.
Nothing fell! That alone felt like winning. And the smell — I nearly forgot the smell, and the smell is half of it, real marigolds smell like a festival, plastic ones smell like nothing, like a warehouse, and when you walk in from outside, the smell gets you before the lights do.
If the garlands are a day old, sprinkle water on them in the morning, keep them cool, not by the stove, not on a sunny windowsill. I lost a whole garland to a sunny windowsill once.
Dried out by noon. 150 rupees. I still think about it.
I know. I know it is silly. I think about it anyway.
Finish with a Small Rangoli and Gold Cushions
Fourth, the floor, which I used to skip completely, because in my head rangoli was for talented people with steady hands, and I have neither, my hands shake when I am concentrating, it is a whole thing. So I never did it. This year I did a small one. One circle, near the entrance, coloured powder from last year — I already had it, so that cost nothing, which is my favourite kind of cost — plus petals from the leftover garland bits, the short pieces too small to hang.
Forty minutes, me on the floor, steel plate of powder, and it is not perfect, I need you to understand this, one side is wider than the other, it is visibly wider, and my daughter, nine, no mercy whatsoever, looked at it and said it looked like a flower that had been sat on. And I laughed, because she was not wrong, she was not entirely wrong, and then I put the brass stand next to it, scattered a few extra petals around, and suddenly — I do not know how to explain this, I really don’t, it is one of those things you have to see — the uneven side did not matter. The rangoli grounded the room.
Without it, the diyas and the garlands felt like decorations sitting on top of a normal room, like stickers on a wall. With it, the floor was part of it. The floor itself was festive.
Does that make sense? I hope it does, because it is the truest thing I have written in this whole piece, and I have written a lot of rambling in this piece, I know, I started at midnight and I keep remembering things — the tray! I almost forgot the tray again, I already told you about the tray, okay, moving on.
Last touch, cheapest one, and also a little bit embarrassing: gold cushion covers. Two of them, bought two years ago, 500 rupees a pair, then forgotten in a cupboard, because of course they were forgotten, that is where things go in my house, cupboards, to be forgotten. Wrinkled. I ironed them in a rush.
I scorched one corner. Slightly. Just a little brown mark, and I hid it against the arm of the sofa, and nobody knew, nobody has ever known, except now you know, because I am telling you, and honestly it feels good to confess it. Because here is the secret, if there is a secret, and I think there is: nobody sees the scorched corner.
Nobody. They see gold catching diya light. They see a warm room.
They feel welcome. And that is the point, right? That is the entire point.
So, one rule, if you want one rule, and I know I have rambled — I have rambled so much, I am sorry, but also I am not sorry, because this is how I actually think about this stuff, in circles, remembering the tray halfway through a sentence about something else — one rule: fewer kinds of things, enough of each, and put them where the light is and where the people are. Diyas on the windowsill and the table. Brass where it can catch flame.
Marigolds at eye level, by the door, by the mirror. One small rangoli on the floor to tie it all together. Total, just under three thousand rupees, and most of it — brass, lanterns, gold covers — comes out again next year, so next year is cheaper, which is a nice thought, I like ending on a cheaper thought. The diyas and garlands are the only diwali decor items you buy fresh each time, and that feels right, that feels like how a festival should work, some things you keep, some things you buy new, every year, again and again.
When Meera left that night she said the house felt like Diwali, not like a shop window, and I stood in the doorway after she left, diyas still burning behind me, and I thought, okay. Okay, maybe I am not so bad at this after all. I hope your room feels like that too. Scorched corner and all.
Read: 5 Ways to Make Diwali Decoration at Home Feel Warm and Glowing — Diwali Decorations at Home
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