Rakhi Pournami is a busy day for Suyog Joshi, the priest at the Santoshi Maa temple at Sultan Bazaar, Hyderabad. He wakes up at 3 am in the morning to get things organised for the festivities that take place every year at the temple.
“We consider Rakhi Pournami to be Santoshi Maa’s birthday. This is the month of Shravana, the first Friday of the month with the Swati Nakshatra, a wonderful star. It’s very, very rare. So it’s an auspicious time,” says Suyog. “We have a lot of devotees coming into the temple to start their vrat (fasting) and make their offerings. All of them take up the 16-week vrat, starting this month. So we have to do all the rituals.”
Suyog has been working as the temple priest for almost a decade, performing rituals on a daily basis. It’s a punishing schedule. “We conduct rituals on an hourly basis, in batches. The first batch starts at 04:30 am in the morning and we conduct Puja (prayers) on an hourly basis for devotees. It goes on till 1:30 in the afternoon. The goddess needs to rest. So we keep the temple shut for some time. In the evening, we start the rituals again at 4:30 pm and it goes on till 08:30 pm.”
Santoshi Maa, the deity believed to have been created from Ganesh’s tears, has millions of believers across the world. Considering her to be a benevolent goddess, many of her devotees perform rituals and vrats (fasting) for sixteen weeks, seeking health, wealth, happiness and fertility.
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