A vrat katha is the story told at the puja of a fast or a festival. It explains why the day is kept, who first kept it and what came of it, and in most homes the fast is not felt to be complete until the katha has been heard. This section retells the kathas of the major vrats and festivals in our own words, in English and in Hindi.
How these kathas are written
Every katha here is retold, not copied. The stories come from the Puranas and from oral tradition, and families tell them in many versions; where the versions differ in an important way, the page says so. We do not reproduce aarti or song texts, though we name the ones families sing.
Many kathas carry a hard turn: a curse, an illness, a loss that a fast later puts right. Those turns are part of how folk stories make their point, and we tell them as stories. Where one appears, the page adds a short note on reading it calmly. Nothing in a katha is a threat to the person reading it, and no katha asks anyone to pay for a remedy.
Where the dates are
No date or time is written into these pages, because the day of a vrat moves each year and the right window differs from city to city. Each katha links the observance's own page on our festival calendar, where the date and the muhurat are worked out by our panchang from the classical rule, and the recurring fasts link their date lists, such as every Ekadashi or Pradosh.
Katha and puja together
Each katha has a companion page on the puja vidhi: the samagri to keep ready, the order of the puja, the customs families keep and the way different regions do it. Read the vidhi to prepare, and the katha to hear at the puja itself.
How to use a katha at home
The katha is usually heard sitting down, after the main worship and before the arti or the breaking of the fast. In many homes the listeners hold a few grains of rice or wheat while it is told, and offer them afterwards. One person reads or tells, the rest listen; children are welcome. If there is no one to tell it, reading it yourself with attention is how many people keep the custom today.