Camphor at Home, Beyond the Puja Thali: 6 Traditional Uses Indian Families Still Keep

In most Indian homes camphor lives on the puja shelf and nowhere else. A generation ago it also lived in the almirah, the storeroom and the evening routine. None of these traditions are medical advice, and we are a camphor maker rather than a clinic — but they are worth writing down, along with the safety rules that always came with them.

1. In the almirah, against damp and musty air

A few tablets in a cloth pouch, tucked at the back of a wardrobe, are the oldest use after worship. Camphor vapour is what you are after, so the pouch must breathe — a sealed box does nothing. Replace every few weeks, because as our storage guide explains, open camphor disappears quickly by design.

Keep it away from silk and from anything with a delicate finish, and never let a tablet sit directly against fabric.

2. Monsoon rooms that have been shut up

A room closed for a week in July smells of damp because still, humid air has nowhere to go. The traditional answer is fragrance plus airflow: open a window, light a sambrani cup or a dhoop cone on a metal plate, and let the room clear for fifteen minutes.

Sambrani is the strongest of the two and the traditional choice for this. Our comparison of agarbatti, dhoop and sambrani explains why.

3. Closing the evening

In many households the lamp is lit at dusk, a stick of agarbatti is set going, and a sambrani cup is carried once through the house before the family sits down to eat. Whatever else it does, a fixed fragrance at a fixed hour is a remarkably effective signal that the working day is over.

4. Festival air, without the headache

During Diwali and other long pujas the temptation is to burn everything at once. The traditional sequence is gentler and works better: agarbatti through the day, camphor only for the aarti itself, sambrani at the end. Our Diwali checklist sets out quantities so you are not lighting six tablets in a closed room.

5. Storerooms and unused trunks

Trunks, lofts and storerooms that are opened twice a year carry the same problem as the monsoon bedroom. A breathable pouch of camphor tablets in the trunk and a dhoop stick lit near the door when you open it is the old routine. Our wet dhoop sticks are the format normally used for a space that large.

6. Layering fragrance in a large house

One agarbatti will not scent a three-bedroom house, and lighting six is unpleasant. The way it has always been done is by zone: light sticks in the puja room and the hall, a dhoop cone in the room that needs the most help, and nothing in the bedrooms until an hour before they are used.

The safety rules that go with all of it

• Never leave a lit lamp or cone near curtains, paper or a wooden shelf.
• Ventilate whenever you burn more than one tablet.
• If anyone in the house has asthma or a breathing condition, keep smoke to a minimum and ask their doctor first.
• Buy pure camphor. A wax-cut tablet produces soot you then breathe — the tests are in our purity guide.