Member-only story
The Festival That Takes Over Our Home Every Year
How my family celebrates Vara Mahalakshmi: from a week of cleaning and cooking to dressing the Goddess and feeding everyone who comes home.
I’m writing about the festival two weeks late.
The reason is that I’m not very good at explaining rituals or anything, for that matter. I’m not very photogenic, and I’ve just started learning basic editing. I took some time to decide whether I should write about it at all. Then I thought, why not? It will be good practice.
So here I am, sharing my festival experience.
We celebrated Vara Mahalakshmi. It’s a festival celebrated in southern India. Though it’s popular in all the South Indian states, I haven’t seen people in my neighbourhood or even my classmates from other South Indian states celebrate it. That has led me to think that it may be most popular in Karnataka. I could be wrong, though, because it requires quite a lot of hard work to decorate.
The festival is called Vara Mahalakshmi Vratha. “Vara” means boon, and Mahalakshmi is Goddess Lakshmi. Married women mainly observe it to seek the blessings of Ashtalakshmi, i.e., eight forms of Lakshmi associated with wealth, strength, wisdom…
