The Nehru Jacket: One Night It Belongs, Five Nights It Doesn't

Men's Puja dressing is mercifully simple. A kurta. And on one evening, a kurta with something over it.

The whole question is: which evening, and what.

Which night does the jacket belong to?

Ashtami. That is it.

It is the night with the sit-down dinner, the photographs, and the people you see once a year. Every other evening a good kurta on its own is correct, and a jacket is trying too hard.

(Dashami counts too — but only if you are going to a party rather than to the immersion.)

Nehru jacket, or something else?

• The Nehru jacket. The safe answer and the right one. Goes over any kurta, adds structure at the shoulder, never reads as costume. Nehru jackets.
• A kurta jacket set, bought together. Better proportioned than a jacket picked separately, because the two lengths were cut to work with each other. Kurta jacket sets.
• A sherwani. No. That is wedding weight and every man in the room will know it. Save it for November. Sherwanis and indo-western.

Three rules that decide whether it works

1. The jacket ends above the kurta's side slit. Below it, the whole line breaks. This is the one everybody gets wrong.
2. Contrast, but barely. A tonal jacket — the kurta's colour, a few shades deeper — beats a hard contrast nearly every time. Black over anything is the exception, and it always works.
3. One texture at a time. Worked jacket over plain kurta, or plain jacket over textured. Both worked, and the outfit is wearing you.

And the other five days?

Cotton and cotton-silk kurtas, plain or lightly printed, in colours that survive a warm October evening. RANJH kurta pajama, RANJH menswear.

Five looks, worked out day by day: the men's Puja wardrobe.