The Pooja Ghar Before Diwali: Cleaning and Arranging It

The north-east is the traditional zone, and it is the most consistent piece of guidance in household Vastu. The east is the usual second choice. The space is raised off the floor rather than standing directly on tiles, and kept clean in a way the rest of the home is not expected to be.

What is avoided matters as much. A मंदिर (mandir, shrine) is not placed under a staircase, against a wall shared with a bathroom, directly beneath a toilet on the floor above, in a bedroom where there is any alternative, or in the storeroom.

Images are usually placed facing west or south, so that the person praying faces east or north. East is the conventional direction for morning worship; north is associated with increase and is equally acceptable.

Two smaller conventions come up often. Images are not placed directly facing one another, and nothing is positioned so that its back is to the person praying. Where a niche makes this awkward, the direction the worshipper faces takes priority over everything else.

This is the part that actually takes time, and most households do a version of it without calling it Vastu.

What is conventionally removed is anything broken, spent or no longer in use.

Broken idols and spent materials are not simply put out with the household rubbish in most traditions, and this is the question people ask most often.

The common practice is immersion in flowing water, though in Mumbai that has become an environmental problem rather than a solution. The practical alternatives now are to return earthen items to soil — a garden, a large plant pot — or to hand them to a temple that accepts such items for proper disposal. Several Mumbai temples and societies organise collection before and after festivals. Paper and cloth can be given for respectful disposal in the same way.

Where none of that is available, wrapping the item in clean cloth before disposing of it is what most families settle on.

Most Mumbai flats have no pooja room, and none of the guidance above requires one.

A wall unit, a shelf or a cabinet in the north-east of the living room works perfectly well. What matters is that it is raised, clean, not crossed by daily traffic, and not sharing a wall with a bathroom.

In a one-room flat where the shrine has to be in the bedroom, keep it in the north-east corner, screen it with a curtain or a shutter when the room is being used for sleeping, and do not place it at the foot of the bed.

The shrine is cleaned thoroughly before Diwali and then, in a great many homes, slowly becomes a shelf again — the place where keys, letters and small objects land because it is at eye level by the door.

If one habit is worth keeping from the preparation, it is that the pooja space holds only what belongs to it. That is a daily matter rather than an annual one, and it costs nothing.