Gifts For Bhai Dooj

It falls on the second day after Diwali, in the bright fortnight of Kartik. It is Bhai Beej or Bhau Beej across Maharashtra and Gujarat, Bhaubij in everyday Marathi spelling, Bhai Phota in Bengal, Bhai Tika in Nepal and the hill country, and Yama Dwitiya in the older almanacs. That last name carries the story: Yamuna received her brother Yama at her house, marked his forehead and fed him, and he asked that any brother received that way be granted long life. The rite has not changed much since. The sister applies the tilak and prays. The brother gives something back.

The tradition says the brother gives. Most people shopping are buying for one.

Roughly four in five people looking for a gift for this festival are looking for one to give a brother, which is the reverse of the ritual direction. Both are honest. In most families now the giving runs both ways, and a sister who wants something of her own to hand over on the day is not doing it wrong. Choose by who the person is rather than by which side of the tilak they stood on. Raksha Bandhan, five months earlier in Shravan, runs on the same logic with a thread in place of a tilak, and the pieces that suit it mostly suit this day too.

For a brother, choose by where he spends his day

A brother who drives is best served by a dashboard piece, because it is the one kind of gift he will see every morning without having to remember it. A brother living away from home, in another city or another country, is the case a pocket temple was made for: it folds shut, it travels in a suitcase, and it answers the problem of a rented room with nowhere sensible to put a shrine. A brother with a household of his own can take something for the shelf. A Kamdhenu cow with her calf is given for prosperity and reads as a blessing on the house rather than a present to a person, and a Ganesha is the safest choice in any home where you are not certain which deity they keep. Jagannath suits the east, where this day is Bhai Phota. If he already owns all of it, a Hanuman is the traditional protective figure and the one a sister most often lands on, since protection is exactly what she has just prayed for.

For a sister, the gift goes to her home rather than to her

Convention sends the brother's gift towards the household on the grounds that a married sister is running one of her own. That points at a Lakshmi or a Lakshmi Ganesh pair for her puja shelf, both of which sit in their own collections rather than this one, or at something for the rooms guests actually see: an urli by the entrance, a serving piece, a pair of elephants or swans, a brass or plated piece that will still be out next Diwali. The Kamdhenu works in this direction too, and is the single most given piece of the season.

The first page of results for this festival is chocolate

Search for a gift for Bhai Dooj and you get sweets, dry fruit, a bouquet, a mug with his name on it, a wallet. There is nothing wrong with any of that and most of it will be finished by the end of the week. The case for a murti is narrow and worth stating plainly: it is still there in a year, and on a day whose entire content is a blessing, a piece made to receive one is not a strange thing to put in someone's hands. If your brother would genuinely rather have the chocolate, buy him the chocolate.

What these are actually made of

The plated pieces are built on a resin core with a layer of copper over it and gold or silver electroplated on top, and on some pieces both. The copper is the part worth knowing about, because resin cannot be plated directly and the copper is what the precious metal keys onto. It is also why these are light for their size, why the detail stays crisp on a small figure, and why water is the one thing they cannot take. Keep a plated piece out of abhishek, wipe it dry, and it holds its face for years. Brass is the opposite trade: solid brass poured slowly into a mould made for that one idol and broken open once the metal has cooled, so every casting gets its own mould. That is why the detail holds where a reusable sand mould softens it, and why the alloy has to be high grade, since a lesser one will not fill the shape cleanly. Brass takes water, takes daily worship, and darkens over the years into a surface most families come to prefer to the shine. The white and gold pieces are a resin core coated in marble dust, with the jewellery cast separately in brass, electroplated, and applied to the figure by hand one piece at a time, which is why the finish varies a little between them. Keep those dry and lift them by the base.

What this costs, and when to shop somewhere else

A great deal of the searching around this festival is for something under five hundred, sometimes under two hundred. Svastika does not sell in that band, and a sweet shop or a marketplace will serve you better there. The range starts near a thousand. Between one and three thousand is where a plated murti, a pocket temple or a dashboard piece sits, and it is the band most of this is bought in. Past five thousand you are into heavily worked brass and the hand set white and gold figures, which run up towards ten thousand and are usually bought as the one substantial gift of the year rather than as one of several.

Diwali is your real deadline, not Bhai Dooj

Because the day falls two days after Diwali, the gift has to be in the house before Diwali rather than after it, and that fortnight is the slowest of the year for couriers across India. Order it when you order the Diwali things and treat the Diwali date as the deadline. Everything ships in our own packaging, made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey, which counts for more here than on most occasions, because the gift is handed over in front of the family and unwrapped on the spot. Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out. For a long family list or an order in volume, there is a bulk order enquiry.