Jaya Ekadashi is the Ekadashi of the bright half of Magha, a few days after Vasant Panchami, when the cold is just beginning to soften. Its katha is about two performers of Indra's court, the gandharva Malyavan and the apsara Pushpavati, who were cursed for a lapse on stage and set free by a fast they kept without meaning to.
When it next falls, and when the fast may be broken in your city the next morning, can be seen on the Ekadashi vrat dates list, where every Ekadashi has a page with its parana window. The story follows, retold in our words.
The katha
Yudhishthira said, "Krishna, you have spoken of Shattila Ekadashi in the dark half of Magha. Tell me now of the Ekadashi of the bright half. What is its name, and what is its story?"
Krishna answered, "It is called Jaya. It is so pure that it frees a person even from the state of a wandering spirit. Listen to how it once freed two of Indra's own singers."
A performance in Nandana
In heaven, Indra was enjoying a festival in the Nandana garden. The trees were in flower, the air was sweet, and the apsaras and gandharvas had been called to sing and dance before him. Among the gandharvas was Malyavan, and among the apsaras was Pushpavati. That day they were to perform together.
They had seen each other before, but that day something changed. As soon as Pushpavati began to dance she found herself looking at Malyavan, and he found himself looking back. Neither could think of anything else. The song lost its tune; the dance lost its count. Steps came late, notes came early, and the words of the song tangled.
Indra noticed at once. He saw that the two were not careless by nature, only lost in each other, but in his court that was no excuse. He said, "You have dishonoured this gathering and the art you serve. Go down to earth and live as pishachas, a man and a woman of that wandering kind, and live with what you have chosen."
The night in the Himalaya
The two fell from heaven and found themselves on the slopes of the Himalaya, in bodies that were strange and frightening even to themselves. They could not sleep properly, could not taste food, could hardly think. The snow and the wind cut through them. Every day was cold, and every night was colder.
One day the misery was so great that they did not eat at all. There was nothing they wanted, and nothing they could find. They did not kill anything, they did not drink, they simply sat together in their suffering. When the sun went down they sat under a pipal tree, holding on to each other against the cold, too frozen and too sad to sleep. Pushpavati said, "What did we do to deserve this?" and Malyavan said, "Let us never again do anything that brings us to a place like this." They stayed awake, shivering, until the sky grew light.
That day, though neither of them knew it, was Jaya Ekadashi. Without intending it they had kept the fast, and without intending it they had kept the night awake.
With the morning of Dwadashi, by the grace of Vishnu, the curse fell away. Their old forms came back, bright and beautiful, and a chariot came down to carry them home.
Back in Indra's court
They went straight to Indra and bowed before him. Indra was astonished. "How have you been freed so soon from my curse? Which god set you free?"
Malyavan said, "Lord, it was Vishnu, through the Ekadashi called Jaya. We kept it without knowing, out of sheer misery, and it was enough."
Indra's anger had long gone. He said, "Then you are dear to Vishnu, and anyone dear to him is honoured by me. Stay here, and be happy." And the two lived in heaven together once more.
Krishna ended by telling Yudhishthira that whoever keeps Jaya Ekadashi with devotion, or hears and reads this story, is freed from the heaviest troubles.
Reading the story calmly
Like several Ekadashi stories, this one turns on a curse, and Indra's punishment can sound far heavier than a slip in a performance deserves. The tradition hears it as a story told in large colours: attention matters, and the arts ask for the whole mind. The curse is not the centre of the story. The centre is the night under the pipal tree, two people holding on to each other, and a grace that reached them before they even asked for it.
What the day is kept for
Jaya means "victory", and the mahatmya calls this Ekadashi one that removes even the gravest faults and frees one from the state of a ghost or wandering spirit. These are the claims of the text, offered as praise of the day, and families hear them as such.
In the household the day is often kept as a way of leaving something behind: a habit, a quarrel, a run of bad luck, or simply the stiffness of winter. The story's real comfort is in the accident of the fast. If two lost spirits could be lifted by a fast they did not know they were keeping, a person who keeps it knowingly, however imperfectly, can keep it without fear.
How it is kept
Jaya Ekadashi is kept with the usual Ekadashi worship of Vishnu, tulsi, a fruit fast and parana the next morning. Some families keep the night awake with bhajans in memory of Malyavan and Pushpavati's long vigil, and many sit for the evening lamp near a pipal or tulsi. Because the season is turning, the day often sees the first fresh flowers of spring on the altar. The full order of the day is on the Ekadashi puja vidhi page; anyone older, pregnant or unwell can keep it with water and fruit.
The Ekadashis around it
Before it, in the dark half of Magha, is Shattila Ekadashi, the day of sesame. After it, in the dark half of Phalguna, comes Vijaya Ekadashi, the story of Rama on the shore of the ocean. To see the tithi for your city, open the daily panchang.