Every year, as the rains wane, many families across Maharashtra bring the image of the Goddess as Gauri into their homes to sit alongside Ganesha, who is brought in a few days earlier. She comes dressed in fabric and bangles as green as the countryside. All rituals of Gauri are conducted by women. It is they who carry her around, bedeck her, feed her, dance and play around her to make her happy. The idea being that the Goddess has come to her mother’s house (maher, in Marathi) to have some ‘me time’. A similar theme underlies the Durga puja in Bengal, Odisha and Assam, held a few weeks later.

Illustration/Devdutt Pattanaik