You bought it three weeks ago. Hathwa Market, or a shop on Boring Road you walked into twice before deciding. It is the good kurta. It is the one you will be photographed in.
Now count the nights. Shashthi, Saptami, Ashtami, Navami, and Dashami if the family still has legs. Nobody buys five sets. So two or three good outfits go out again and again, and Patna in October is still thirty-two degrees at eight in the evening.
Most people solve this by hanging the kurta back in the almirah at one in the morning and pulling it out again the next night. That single habit is where the damage starts.
What four hours in a Patna pandal puts on your clothes
Stand in the line at Dak Bungalow Chowk on Ashtami and think about what is touching you.
Your own sweat, first. That one you know about.
Other people's, second. In that crowd your sleeve and your back are pressed against strangers for an hour at a stretch. Hair oil transfers on contact. Oil does not evaporate. It sits.
Smoke, third. Dhoop, agarbatti, camphor. Smoke is solid particles floating in air, and they land on cloth and lodge between the threads. That is why the smell is still there in the morning.
Diesel, fourth. Every large pandal runs on a generator set parked on the footpath behind it. You walk past that exhaust going in and coming out.
Cooking oil, fifth. The chowmein and jalebi stalls at the gate are frying in open karahis, and a karahi throws a fine oil mist several feet in every direction. You walk straight through it, twice.
Not one bit of that shows on night one. All of it is on the cloth.
You cannot wash it every night
Half of what people wear to a pandal is not simple cotton. Georgette, silk blends, chikankari, anything with zari on the border. Four hand washes in six days will do more harm than the pandal ever did. The zari dulls, the silk loses its body, the sequins start letting go.
Even plain cotton fights you in October. Wash at one in the morning and your only real drying window is tomorrow's sun, and you are at work by then. A kurta that dries half way and gets worn again is a kurta that will smell by Navami.
So the answer during Puja week is not washing. It is ten minutes.
Ten minutes when you get home
Hang it outside the almirah. Balcony grill, window, or right in front of the fan, and turn it inside out first. One hour of moving air carries off most of the smoke smell, because that smoke is sitting on the surface of the fibre and air lifts it away. A closed almirah does the exact opposite. It keeps the smell in and hands it to every other thing on that shelf.
Do not spray it. Perfume or deodorant onto a sweaty kurta is more oil and alcohol going on top of salt and oil. It buys you three hours. It is also a big reason underarm patches turn stiff and yellow a year later.
Wipe the underarms and the inside of the collar with a cloth dipped in plain water. No soap, no bucket. Fresh sweat dissolves in water. Four day old sweat does not. Ten seconds a side and you are done.
Do not iron it between nights. Heat sets everything. An iron passed over a sweat mark or a speck of karahi oil bakes it into the fibre, and from then on it is permanent. If the kurta needs pressing before Navami, it needs washing before pressing.
Rotate two sets. Alternate them. Each one gets twenty four hours of air instead of four.
Dashami is the real deadline
The damage is not done during Puja. It is done in the eleven months after.
On the eleventh day the good clothes get folded and put away in the trunk, unwashed, because the season is over and everyone is tired. Sweat salt, body oil, a drop of ghee from the prasad, a fine layer of frying oil off the stalls. All of it goes into that trunk and sits there through a Patna winter and a Patna monsoon.
Oil oxidises slowly in the dark. Clear becomes yellow, yellow becomes brown. Silverfish come for the sweat and the starch. That is the whole explanation for the thing that happens every year, when you open the trunk next September and find brown marks on your best kurta that nobody remembers making.
Wash it within a few days of Dashami. Cold water, inside out, no wringing anywhere near zari or sequins. If the label says dry clean, listen to it at least this once. Then store it dry, and store it loose.
That is the entire job
Nine nights out. One or two outfits doing all the work. Air it, wipe it, never iron it dirty, wash it after Dashami.
If those ten minutes at one in the morning are not going to happen, and honestly they often do not, hand the problem over. We pick up from your door anywhere in Patna, wash it the way that cloth needs to be washed, and bring it back folded before the trunk closes for the year.