Flower pot, chakkar or koti: choosing ground items
How the three favourite ground items differ in height, spread and noise, and which one suits a narrow street or a courtyard.
Teaching a child to hold a sparkler for the first time
Where to stand, how to hold the wire and what to do when it burns out: the routine we teach at the counter.
Every Deepavali evening, a few children light their very first sparkler outside our shop on Arcot Road. We have watched hundreds of these moments, and the ones that go well usually follow the same simple routine.
Start with the right sparkler. For a first try we suggest our 7 cm kids’ sparklers, which burn for about 15 seconds and give a soft, small spray. Longer 10 cm and 15 cm sparklers can come later in the evening, once the child is comfortable. Dress the child in cotton clothes with sleeves that are not loose, and keep long hair tied back.
Show them how to hold the sparkler at the very end of the wire, with the arm stretched out and the glowing end pointing away from the body and from other people. An adult lights it with a long agarbatti or a candle in a holder, never with a matchbox in the child’s hand. One sparkler per child at a time, and no running or waving it near faces.
The part most families forget is the finish. A spent sparkler wire stays very hot for a minute or two. Keep a bucket of water nearby and teach the child to drop the wire into it, tip first, as soon as it stops glowing. Make it part of the game. Children like having a job, and a bucket full of wires at the end of the night means nobody steps on one barefoot the next morning.
