Too Early for Diwali Shopping – Purple or Lavender?

Is it too early to start Diwali shopping now? It depends on who you ask, definitely. What we found is that women always feel that it is never too early to start shopping whereas for men, there’s always that last week before Diwali that seems to be the perfect time for any festive shopping that has to be done.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, because frankly, women need to assemble a lot more things than men do. Firstly, women tend to have a few lists to cater for the different categories of things they need. The first one is the delicacy category where the list will include things like flour, rice flour, jaggery, sugar, ghee, margarine, butter, cashews, almonds, raisins, sesame seeds, food colouring, dried cherries, muruku mix, omapodi mix, gram dhall flour, etc.

This round of shopping is usually slotted into the 5th week preceding Diwali, just in time as groceries all over the country stock up with the latest supplies. The second category, and hence the second round of shopping trips (we say trips because there will be at least a couple of trips per list), is the clothing, which is often the most exciting and yet, the most exhausting because, it means trying suit after suit, up and down the escalators and in and out of malls, looking for that best dress (or jeans or shirt or whatever).

And we all know too well, that there has to be two pairs at least of outfits for each person, what we call as Day 1 dress and Day 2 dress. We know some clever mums who recycle the birthday dresses or those bought for any earlier occasion that year into the Day 2 outfit (yes, guilty as charged) and that has always helped cut down the amount of shopping needed.

Another shortcut is to simply buy the textile material and go to the tailor and have a custom made piece (usually a Punjabi suit, Lengga or saree blouse), but most experienced Diwali shoppers will say that all material sourcing must be done at least 3 months before, because everyone knows too well that placing an order with the local tailor in the last 4 weeks is virtually impossible with the number of orders that pile up during the season.With clothes and food ticked off the list, should we focus on the menfolk next?

Not really, click here for the Part 2 of this article that covers more lists that women keep to create the perfect Diwali experience