A calendar
Five days of lamps in the darkest fortnight of the year. One day, told hour by hour, and the reason underneath the light.
Oil bath, new clothes. The house was cleaned in the days before; today it is finished and open.
Rangoli at the threshold — coloured powder in patterns that invite in and keep out. Sweets are made or bought and stacked for giving.
Visits. Boxes of sweets change hands. Debts are settled; account books, in some homes, are opened new.
Lakshmi puja — the goddess of prosperity is welcomed with a lamp, flowers, and the family together. The first diya is lit from that flame.
Every window, wall, and step carries a small clay lamp. Fireworks. The house is the brightest thing in the dark.
The lamps burn down. Someone stays to watch the last one.
The stories differ by region — Rama returning to Ayodhya after fourteen years of exile, Krishna ending a tyrant, Lakshmi choosing a home — and they agree on the shape: a return of light to a place that had gone dark, and a household that made itself ready to receive it. The lamp is not decoration. It is the readiness, made visible.
If you are invited: bring sweets, wear something with colour, and when you are handed a lamp, light it from the one already burning. That is the whole etiquette.