Girls perform Kumar Purnima rituals in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 7: Young girls today celebrated Kumar Purnima with a wish to get a perfect life partner.

Across the state, girls wearing new clothes chanted prayers to invoke the Sun and the Moon deities.

The traditional Odia festival of Kumar Purnima is celebrated on the full-moon day of the Asvina month on the Hindu calendar. Kumar is an alias of Lord Kartik. The girls through worship try to appease him, as he is considered to be the most handsome of all gods.

The ceremonies began early in the morning when the devotees offered prayers to the Sun deity followed by fasting throughout the day. The fast is broken in the evening after worshipping the Moon.

In the morning, a handful of water, along with flower petals, known as anjali, is offered to the rising Sun. In the evening, a special prasad named Chanda, made of bananas, cottage cheese, grated coconut and flowers, shaped in the form of a crescent, is offered to the full moon.

The worshippers spent the day with friends and relatives singing and dancing to folk music. The traditional game, Puchi, was played in rural areas. Various types of country cakes such as poda pitha, arisa pitha and manda pitha were prepared in many homes. The devotees got together in groups, creating jhoti (designs made with rice paste) in front of the Tulsi or Basil plant.

“We, the urban girls, cannot afford time to perform all the rituals. But, we try our best to celebrate this occasion with sincerity,” said Lipsa Priyadarshini, a 24-year-old engineer.

Celebrating the cultural heritage of the festival, the Utkal Dance and Research Academy organised a two-day Kumar Utsav in the city, where noted dancers and musicians of the state performed. A social group named Youth felicitated Tulasi Munda, a social activist, with the Kumar Shree Samman.

At Berhampur, dancer Kavita Dwivedi and vocalist Sujit Kumar Parida enthralled the audience with their performances at the Kumara Punei Jahna Lo programme, organised by the Madhumaya Panigrahi Foundation at Town Hall.

Kavita, a versatile dancer, presented Odissi abhinaya Ahe nila saila and Tunga sikhara chula. Sujit Kumar mesmerised the audience with two classic hits of Kishore Kumar, Aaa chal ke tujhe and Ruk jaana nahi tu kahin haar ke.