Vat Savitri Puja -A festival for the love of husbands

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Vat Savitri Puja is celebrated all over India with great gusto. Here is an insight to its legendary story, tradition and celebration. Explore one of the most acclaimed puja followed by Hindus.

Vat Savitri is a celebration observed by women in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Orissa. and Maharashtra. In this festival married women pray and fast for their husbands' long life by tying threads around a banyan tree. It honours Savitri, the legendary wife who conquered death for her husband's life. In south India this fast is known as Karadaiyan Nonbu.

The Story
Savitri was the beautiful daughter of King Ashwapati of Madra Desa. A lustrous woman of great beauty, she was sent to the forest ashrams of sages to look for a suitable bridegroom for herself. She choose to marry Satyawan, prince in exile who was living in the forest with his blind father Dyumatsen. When she revealed her determination to marry Satyawan to her parents, the court astrologers tried to stop her as they figured that the prince's lifeline showed that he would die within a year. Savitri had however, accepted him as her husband and would not step back from her resolution. She married him and went to the forest ashram to live with him and his parents.

One day the couple went into the deep forest to collect wood. After a tedious work Satyawan rested under a Vat tree. At this moment Yama, the god of death came to snatch away his life. Savitri, seeing Yama, take away her husband's breath, followed, pleading with him to return her husband's life till the door of heaven. With sheer determination, intelligence and devotion she won back her in- laws lost sight, lost kingdom and the life of her husband.

Custom and rituals

Married Hindu women observe this festival worshiping and propitiating Savitri as a Devi. On this day women (whose husbands are alive) take purificatory bath, wear new clothes and bangles,and apply vermilion on the fore-head. Later they eat the roots of Vat Vriksha (Banyan tree) along with water.

After a simple ritual at home women throng at the nearest banyan trees where they pour holy water from the Ganges and tie red threads around the tree and wish for long conjugal life to their spouses. Wet pulses, rice, mango, jack fruit, lemon, banana and several other fruits are offered as Bhoga (offering). After observing fasting for the whole day they simply take the Bhoga. When all formalities of worship are over they bow low to their respective husbands and elderly people for blessings.

Some women after returning home, draw a Banyan tree using a paste made of turmeric and sandalwood and sit near the drawing and pray for several hours and take a resolution. Other traditions observe fast for 3 nights and on the fourth day they offer water to the Moon God and worship Vat Savitri.

Hindu traditions may vary from place to place but the zest and the basis of celebrating the festival remain the same. The festival is all about the love and devotion of a wife to her husband.