The sixteen days and what you put down
The new salwar sits in its polypropylene wrap. The gold earrings go back in the steel box. For sixteen days across the Krishna Paksha of Bhadrapada, the lunar fortnight Hindus call Pitru Paksha, the household observes: no new clothes, no jewellery, no adornment of any kind. The ancestors are being fed. The living are meant to look like they know it.
