Return Gifts For Varalakshmi Pooja

The vratam is kept on a Friday in Shravana, mainly in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and in some Maharashtrian families. A married woman keeps the fast, sets up the kalasha as the goddess, and invites other married women to the house. Nobody leaves empty handed, and the parcel they leave with is the thamboolam.

The names change every few hundred kilometres. Varalakshmi Vratam, Vratham or Vrata in Telugu and in general use, Varamahalakshmi Vrata or habba in Karnataka, Varalakshmi Nombu in Tamil households, and Varalaxmi wherever the spelling has been shortened. The parcel is thamboolam, tamboolam, thambulam or tambula, one word travelling through four languages.

What goes into it is settled by custom rather than by choice: betel leaves and areca nut, turmeric and kumkum, a blouse piece, bangles, fruit, flowers and a coin. We make none of that and would not pretend to. It is bought fresh in the same week, locally, and it is the part of the gift that no online order improves. The return gift proper is the one lasting piece placed in alongside, and that is the part we make.

What to spend a head, and when to buy elsewhere

Most of the searching around this occasion is for something under a hundred rupees a head, or under five hundred. That is an entirely reasonable way to keep the vratam and it is what the majority of households do. At that money the thamboolam itself is the gift: a good bag, the traditional contents, perhaps a steel tumbler or a sweet box, all bought from a local shop that does this every Shravana. Below about a thousand rupees a head we are honestly not the right shop, and a well filled thamboolam from the market does the day more credit than the cheapest thing we could sell you.

What we make begins in the band above that. A small plated piece sits between one and two thousand, which suits a gathering of ten or twenty rather than a hundred, and reads as a keepsake rather than a token. Above three thousand you are into the substantial single gift, the one that goes to a mother, a mother in law, or the sumangali who is the reason the invitation list exists at all. Both are worth doing. Neither is worth stretching a sixty guest list to cover.

Buy one design in quantity rather than assembling a mixture, since guests compare and a mixture reads as leftovers. It matters more here than at most occasions, because the thamboolams are usually handed over in a row from the same tray in front of everybody.

What to give

Lakshmi is the goddess of the day, so a Lakshmi piece is the fitting one and needs explaining to nobody. Her charan paduka, the sculpted footprints, is the strongest answer at quantity: small, unmistakably hers, and kept at an entrance facing inward rather than needing shelf space in a mandir that is already full. For the wider range of her forms see Lakshmi in every form.

The Kamdhenu cow with her calf is the safe one when the guest list runs past the family. It is domestic rather than devotional, it asks nothing of the household that receives it, and nobody has a reason to set it aside. It is also the piece stocked deepest here, which matters when you need forty of the same thing.

Across much of Andhra, Telangana and Tamil Nadu the household deity is already Tirupati Balaji, and a small Balaji piece, or his charan with the shankha and chakra, sits alongside what is on the shelf rather than competing with it. The Ashtalakshmi tortoise carries the eight forms of the goddess on something small enough for any shelf, which is a real advantage for a gift that has to land in sixty different houses.

A lamp is the other honest choice, because it gets lit rather than only looked at, and lighting one is what the day is about. Brass diyas here start a little under a thousand and are stocked in tens rather than hundreds, so a diya suits a gathering of ten or twenty and is not the answer for a large one. A pocket temple works where the per head budget is generous, though the Lakshmi version is the one that runs short first, so check it before planning around it.

Two things worth saying plainly, because both are traditional and neither is here. A kumkum bharani, the little pot for haldi and kumkum, is a genuinely apt return gift and we do not make one, so buy that locally. And Gaja Lakshmi standing on her own, the goddess flanked by elephants, is not something we can promise at the moment; where she appears here it is inside the wider Gajalakshmi Balaji composition rather than alone.

Plated for the guests, brass for the one gift

A plated piece is 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, since resin cannot be plated directly and the copper is what the precious metal keys onto. It is why these are light, which is not a small thing when forty of them have to be carried into a house and handed out; why the detail stays crisp at the size a return gift has to be; and why water is the one thing that takes the finish off. A plated piece belongs on a shelf rather than in an abhishek, and that is the only real mistake available here. See plated pieces.

Solid brass is the other direction and it is right for the single substantial gift rather than for the quantity. It is poured slowly into a mould made for that one idol, and the mould is broken open once the metal has cooled, so every casting gets its own. 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 brass will not fill the shape cleanly. Brass takes abhishek indefinitely and cleans back with lemon and salt, which is what makes it the piece a mother in law still has in twenty years. It is also heavier and dearer, so it goes to one person rather than to sixty.

A gift for the woman keeping the vratam

Not everybody arriving is a guest. Where the gift is for the woman who kept the fast, a mother, a sister or a daughter in law, the logic reverses: one piece chosen for her own shelf rather than one of forty. A Lakshmi murti in the size her mandir will actually take is the obvious answer, and a Lakshmi Ganesh pair is the safer one where you do not know what is already there. Two to four inches suits a shelf mandir, five to eight inches a standard home mandir. Read base width alongside height, since a seated Lakshmi on a broad lotus takes more shelf than her height suggests.

The count, and when to order

The count is where these orders go wrong. The list is the sumangalis invited, plus the ones who come with them, plus the neighbour who walks in because the house is open. Order for more than you counted, because a woman who leaves without a thamboolam is what everybody remembers about the day, and anything spare goes straight into Diwali about ten weeks later.

The date is known months ahead, since it is fixed to Shravana, and the orders still arrive in the same week. Order early, because a single finish in quantity is the first thing to run short, and a part filled order in two finishes is exactly the mixture worth avoiding. Send the count and the date through the bulk order enquiry page and we will confirm what can be matched in one finish, or see what works in numbers.

Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out, and everything ships in our own packaging, made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey. That matters more at this occasion than at most, because these are handed over in front of a room and opened on the spot.

The date, and the occasions either side of it

The rule is the Friday before the full moon of Shravana, which puts it in late July or August and within a few days of Raksha Bandhan, since that falls on the same full moon. Published dates still disagree, sometimes by a whole week, because panchangams differ over which Friday is meant and over when Shravana begins. Follow your family's panchangam.

The vratam is kept for the wellbeing of the family, and the story behind it, told in the Skanda Purana, is of Charumati of Magadha, to whom the goddess appeared in a dream and asked for this one Friday's observance. It is worth knowing, because it explains the shape of the day: the honour is in the inviting and in the sending home, not in the size of the object.

Lakshmi keeps more occasions than any other deity here. Diwali and the Lakshmi puja are the pan India peak about ten weeks later, and most of what suits this list suits that one. For a new house see griha pravesh, and for a company list see gifting at scale.