Almost every festival greeting is built one of two ways.

Pattern one: [festival] मुबारक, warm and universal, Arabic in origin but used by everyone. Pattern two: शुभ [festival], meaning auspicious, slightly more formal and Sanskrit-flavoured. Either works for almost any occasion, so learning the two templates covers you for festivals you have never heard of.

A few have their own conventions. Dussehra is formally विजयादशमी, and बधाई suits it better than मुबारक. Lohri and Baisakhi are Punjabi harvest festivals where बधाई is standard. And note that many Indians also mark a regional new year — Ugadi, Gudi Padwa, Baisakhi, Pohela Boishakh — so नया साल मुबारक may be said at several points in the year.

सुख-समृद्धि — happiness and prosperity — is the standard pairing in Diwali messages specifically, because the festival is tied to Lakshmi and wealth. Adding परिवार सहित matters more than it would in English, since festival wishes in India are directed at the household rather than the individual.

Festival wishing in India is broad rather than selective. Colleagues, neighbours, your building’s security guard, the shopkeeper you buy milk from and your driver all get wished, and forgetting someone in that circle is noticed more than a slightly wrong phrase would be.

Wishing across religions is normal and welcome. A Hindu colleague will be pleased to receive Eid Mubarak, and a Muslim neighbour will be pleased with Diwali wishes. The awkward move is not wishing at all, on the assumption that a festival belongs to someone else.

Timing matters for a few. Eid depends on the moon being sighted, so the date is sometimes confirmed only the evening before, and sending wishes a day early can be genuinely wrong. Diwali runs over five days, so the window is wide.

Sweets are the physical form of the greeting. Boxes of mithai circulate through offices and between neighbours for the whole week around a major festival, and receiving one creates a mild obligation to send something back at the next occasion. If a box arrives from a neighbour you barely know, that is an opening rather than an imposition, and returning the gesture is how the acquaintance becomes a relationship.

मुबारक is four even beats — ‘mu-baa-rak’ — with no stressed syllable. शुभ is a single clipped syllable with an aspirated bh. दीपावली has a long ee at the front and four beats. समृद्धि is the hard one: a cluster of द्ध in the middle, so take it slowly. And ख़ुशियाँ is nasalised at the end with the raspy kh at the start.

• Assuming मुबारक is only for Muslim festivals. It is used for all of them.
• Not wishing someone because the festival is not from their religion.
• Sending Eid wishes before the moon has been sighted.
• Wishing only the person rather than adding परिवार सहित.
• Using बधाई and मुबारक interchangeably for every occasion without noticing which fits.

1. Write a Diwali message and an Eid message in Hindi.
2. Apply both greeting patterns to three festivals each.
3. Add सुख-समृद्धि and परिवार सहित to a message.
4. List five people you would wish at a festival.
5. Practise समृद्धि until the cluster is clean.