Om Namah Durga (I Bow to The Auspicious Durga)

Ritual is the colourful art of worshipping a deity. The two most popular rituals are Pooja and Yajna. Besides other parts of the rituals, the person performing them wears a special prayer cloth which most often has the image of the deity who is being worshipped.

Yellow is the colour of religion and ascetism. This prayer cloth in yellow seeks to appease goddess Durga in her most benevolent form. The entire field has the invocation mantra written in the auspicious Devanagari script. Enclosing the massive field of the repetitive mantra is a border containing sacred symbols. The two ends of the long cloth contains images of Durga depicted as a queen armed for battle. In this 'Singhavahini' form, she is seated over the lion's back in lalitasana. In her eight arms she holds the weapons given to her by various gods which includes a bow and an arrow, a trident, a sword, a mace, the chakra and a padma and a conch shell too. With her left hand she makes a blessing gesture to her devotees. She has a halo around her crowned head. Her peaceful countenance spreads peace and ask her devotees to have faith in her. The lion that she rides look ferocious yet contained under her.

The red imprint on yellow cloth infuses religion with energy associated with Durga. The prayer cloth ends in neatly cut and tied tassels.