Pausha Putrada Ekadashi is the Ekadashi of the bright half of Pausha, the deep-winter month, and the second of the two Putrada Ekadashis in the year. Its katha tells of King Suketuman and Queen Shaibya, who had no child, and of the morning the king rode alone into the forest and came upon sages who told him what day it was.
The Ekadashi list at Ekadashi vrat dates shows when this one next comes, along with the other Ekadashis of the year; each day's page there carries the parana window for your city, which is the time to break the fast. Below is only the story, told in our own words.
The katha
Yudhishthira asked Krishna, "You have told me of Saphala Ekadashi in the dark half of Pausha. What is the Ekadashi of the bright half called, and who is its lord?"
Krishna said, "It is called Putrada, and Narayana himself is worshipped on it. In all the three worlds there is hardly a fast that gives more. Listen to the story of a king who learned of it almost by chance."
A king with everything but one thing
In the city of Bhadravati there ruled a king named Suketuman. His queen was Shaibya. The kingdom was rich, the treasury full, the army loyal, and the people had little to complain about. But no child had been born in the palace, and as the years passed the king and queen spoke of it less and felt it more.
The king's sorrow went beyond the quiet of the house. He thought of his forefathers, to whom he offered water and food in the rites for the departed. In the old way of thinking, it is a son who carries those offerings on after the father is gone. Suketuman began to imagine that his ancestors took his offerings with a sigh, knowing that after him no one would offer them anything. The thought would not leave him. Wealth, friends and the throne itself began to seem to him like things that would simply stop with him.
The queen grieved too, in her own way, and the two of them sat through many evenings saying very little.
Into the forest
One day the king could bear the palace no longer. He mounted his horse without telling anyone and rode into a thick forest. He passed deer with their fawns, birds feeding their young in the nests, elephants walking with their calves between them. Everywhere he looked there were parents and children, and every sight made his own loss sharper.
By midday he was tired and thirsty, and he began to wonder what he had done in this or some earlier life to be left so. Then, between the trees, he saw water. It was a wide lake, covered with lotuses, with swans and ducks moving across it, and on its bank were the small huts of sages. Many of them sat by the water reciting the names of God.
The king's heart lifted. He got down from his horse, went to them with folded hands and bowed to each in turn. The sages were pleased by his manner. "We are happy with you, king," they said. "Tell us what is troubling you."
Suketuman asked first who they were and why they had gathered there. They told him they were the Vishvedevas, and that they had come to bathe in the lake because it was a holy day: the Ekadashi called Putrada, which gives a child to those who keep it.
The king could hardly speak. "I have no son," he said at last. "If you are pleased with me, grant me that."
"Then keep this fast today," they answered, "for it is today. Keep it fully, and a son will be born to you."
The fast by the lake
Suketuman did not ride home to prepare. He kept the Ekadashi there and then, among the sages, without food, his mind on Vishnu, listening to their prayers through the day and night. On the morning of Dwadashi he broke the fast as they told him, bowed to them again and again, and rode back to Bhadravati.
In time Queen Shaibya conceived, and a son was born to them. He grew into a bright and capable prince, a comfort to his parents and a good ruler to his people after them.
Krishna ended by telling Yudhishthira that whoever keeps Putrada Ekadashi, and whoever hears or reads this story with attention, shares in the blessing the king received.
Reading the story calmly
The king's grief belongs to an older world, in which the line of a family was carried by a son and the rites for ancestors depended on him. Families today hear the story with that in mind. They keep the day for a child of either kind, for a safe pregnancy, or for the children already in the house, and they do not read the story as saying that a childless home is unfinished. What stays with listeners is the king's honesty about his sorrow and the kindness of the sages who met it.
What the day is kept for
Putrada means "the giver of children", and the mahatmya says plainly that this fast brings children and the good of this world and the next. That is the text's own promise, and families hear it as a blessing on the day rather than as a bargain.
In practice the day is wider. Couples who hope for a child keep it together; parents keep it for children who are ill, or far away, or starting something new; grandparents keep it for the whole family. Because the Pausha Ekadashi falls in the coldest weeks, it also has a quiet, inward feel, close to the warmth of the household.
How it is kept
Pausha Putrada is kept like other Ekadashis, with worship of Vishnu, tulsi, a fruit fast and parana on Dwadashi. Many couples sit for the puja together, as Suketuman's story ends with both king and queen, and some offer the day's prayer for a named child or for one they hope for. In the south, when this day is Vaikuntha Ekadashi, people go to Vishnu temples before dawn to pass through the northern gate that is opened for the day. The full order of the day is on the Ekadashi puja vidhi page; pregnant women in particular should keep only a light form of the fast, with their doctor's advice first.
The Ekadashis around it
The Ekadashi before this one, in the dark half of Pausha, is Saphala Ekadashi. The one after it, in the dark half of Magha, is Shattila Ekadashi, the day of sesame given six ways. To see when the Ekadashi tithi begins and ends where you live, open the daily panchang.