Vrata Katha

Published on 24th September, 2017, in Mid-day. A friend pointed out that the popular fairy tale Cinderella is very much like a vrata-katha: a girl in trouble, tortured by female members of her family, prays to and is saved by a goddess (fairy godmother in this case). But grace depends on her following certain rules (return home before midnight). And all’s well when she becomes a wife. Vrata means an observance, mostly by women. It does not involve intervention of brahmins, though in many cases priests have wormed their way into the ritual. It basically involves fixing one’s mind (dyana, in Sanskrit) on a deity. ..