Return Gifts For Varalakshmi Pooja

About

Varalakshmi Vratam return gifts, and what a thamboolam is 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 tha