Navratri Gifts Ideas

Nine nights, one goddess, and three observances that want completely different objects. In Gujarat and Maharashtra the season is garba and dandiya in the evenings, with a kalash and a decorated chowki set up at home on the first morning and, in many houses, an akhand jyot kept alight the whole nine nights. In Bengal, Assam and Odisha the same days are Durga Puja, built around the pandal and the neighbourhood rather than the house. In Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka it is Golu, a display of figures assembled on odd-numbered steps, and visitors come to see it.

The gift follows the observance rather than the calendar. A household keeping ghatasthapana wants something for the chowki. A Golu household wants a figure small enough to earn a step. A Durga Puja family is out of the house most of the week, so the gift is really for after. Get that one thing right and the rest of it is easy. The tenth day has its own gifting again, which is Dussehra.

Mata ki chowki is an evening, not a piece of furniture

More people arrive here looking for mata ki chowki gifts than for anything else, and the phrase confuses because it names two things at once. A mata ki chowki is a devotional evening held at home, bhajans and a jagrata for the Devi, often with hired singers and a room full of guests. The chowki itself is the low seat the goddess is installed on, and the evening is named after it.

If you have been invited, you are a guest at somebody's puja, so the useful gift is for the shrine rather than for the host personally. A diya, a small Devi figure, or a chowki for the installation itself. Take it wrapped and hand it over near the start rather than at the end, because the shrine is set before the singing begins.

If you are the one hosting, the return gift goes to every guest on the way out, and the convention in most homes is thamboolam: a small package holding haldi, kumkum, a coconut or fruit, and one keepsake object. The keepsake is the part you are actually shopping for and the only part that outlives the evening. Buy one design in quantity rather than assembling a mixture, because guests compare at the door and a mixture reads as leftovers.

Under a hundred rupees a head, buy locally

Worth saying early rather than late. Most searches for mata ki chowki and Navratri return gifts are working to under a hundred rupees a head, often under fifty, in packs of a dozen or more. Nothing here is at that money. The floor is around 500 for a pooja chowki and about 1,200 for a piece you would put in somebody's hands, and across forty guests that is a different budget entirely.

So if the list is long and the per-head figure is small, buy from a wholesale market: potlis, mini kumkum boxes, printed diya sets. They will do the job better than anything we could ship. Where this is worth the money is the shorter list, twelve or twenty guests, or the single good gift for the family hosting. That is a real decision and it is better made deliberately than by stretching a bulk budget across pieces that were not made for it. For larger quantities at the sizes we do make, there is a bulk order enquiry.

Kanya pujan, and the nine girls

On Ashtami or Navami a household doing kanya pujan invites nine young girls, feeds them halwa, puri and chana, washes their feet and sends them home with a gift. It is kanjak in the north and kanya pujan or kanjika elsewhere, and it is the same rite either way.

The gift is small by design and it is meant for a child: bangles, hair clips, a coin, stationery, a small steel or plated item. Nearly every search for it carries a fifty or a hundred rupee budget, and that is the correct instinct rather than a compromise. Nine girls at a hundred each is the whole convention, and no family receiving it expects more.

Where something from here fits is the exception: a household giving to one or two girls of the family rather than to nine, or a grandparent who wants the gift to still exist in ten years. A small plated figure or a pocket temple does that. For all nine, buy local and put the difference into the food.

Golu is the occasion where the gift is a figure

Golu, also written Kolu or Bommai Golu, and Navarathri or Navaratri in the southern spellings, is the best matched occasion on this page, because the display is made of figures and people genuinely give and receive them.

The padi is an odd number of steps, usually three, five, seven or nine, dressed over the nine nights. The traditional dolls are the bommai, terracotta and painted, bought from the doll markets in Chennai, Madurai and Kumbakonam, along with the wooden marapachi pair and the Chettiar couple with their vegetables. We do not make any of those and a doll market is the right place for them. What a small brass or plated deity does is sit on the upper steps, where the gods go, and that is where a piece bought as a gift tends to end up. Keep it small. A large figure takes a step somebody else wanted.

Return gifts at a Golu are their own convention. Women visiting are given thamboolam: betel leaves, a coconut, fruit, turmeric and kumkum, and often a blouse piece and bangles. One better object among them, for the friend who comes back every year, is where something from here belongs.

Navratri gifts for ladies, and the vaan

A good share of the searching for Navratri gifts for ladies is really about haldi kumkum. Married women are invited, haldi and kumkum are applied, and each guest is given a small gift as she leaves, called vaan in Maharashtra. It runs on the same logic as the return gift: many guests, a small budget, one design repeated.

Where a single considered gift is wanted instead of a stack of them, for a mother, a mother-in-law, or a sister-in-law hosting for the first time, the goddess pieces are the natural answer. Lakshmi is given more often than Durga in this particular situation, because the gift is going to a household rather than to a shrine, and Saraswati suits a house with a student in it.

What it costs, and what each band actually buys

Under 500 covers a pooja chowki, and it is the one genuinely useful thing at that money, because the chowki is what the kalash and the murti are set on and most homes improvise it every year.

Between 1,000 and 1,500 is where the giftable pieces start: a Nav Durga pocket temple that folds shut around the nine forms, a small plated Ashtalakshmi tortoise, or a brass diya for the akhand jyot. This is the band to buy in quantity if you are buying in quantity at all, and it is the one that suits a short return gift list.

Between 3,000 and 5,000 is the band for a proper Devi murti: a small solid brass Durga or Lakshmi, or a white and gold Sherawali from the premium range. This is what one guest gives the household hosting, or what a family buys for its own mandir in the festival week.

Above 5,000, and up past 10,000, are the larger brass pieces and the multi-figure sets. Those get bought for a mandir rather than carried to somebody else's house.

On finish, the short version for a gift: a plated piece presents at its best straight out of the box and asks nothing of the person receiving it, which matters when it is unwrapped in front of a room. Solid brass is the one to choose if it will be bathed or handled daily, and it is the one that gets kept for decades.

Order before the ghatasthapana, not during it

The dates move with the lunar calendar and land in late September or October. Demand does not spread evenly across them either, because it concentrates in the week before the first morning: the chowki has to be set up on day one, so everything gets bought at once. A specific finish is the first thing to become unavailable, so order in the fortnight before rather than in the festival week itself.

Chaitra Navratri, in March or April, is the same nine nights kept mostly as fasting and household puja, and very little gifting happens at it. If you are reading this for Chaitra, the objects are the same and there is no hurry.

Everything ships in our own packaging, which is made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey, and every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out. That matters more here than on most pages, because a good share of these are handed over in front of a room and unwrapped on the spot.

For the goddess herself, Durga and Sherawali murtis. For the shelf around her, pooja essentials and a pooja thali. For the wider pantheon, god idols and figurines.