Vat Purnima Festival, India
Vat Purnima Festival is primarily celebrated by women in the states of the Western Ghat in India. In the Vat Pournima festival, wives pray and ask for their husband's health and wellbeing.
Every year, you can see Maharashtra gearing up for this festival between June and July. Women observe fasting through the night until the next morning during the Vat Pournima festival. In this festival, women fast through the day and tie threads around the auspicious banyan tree to pray to the Lord Almighty for the same husband in 7 lifetimes.
Women who observe Vat Pournima offer sweets and fruits to the saints in bamboo baskets. Women wear traditional bridal wear along with jewelry for Vat Pournima. Banyan tree trunks are tied with vermillion thread after women give them water and apply red Kumkum powder. They also recite and listen to the legendary tale behind Vat Pournima as groups.
Vat Pournima was created as a result of the legendary story about Savitri bringing her dying husband's soul back to life by speaking to Yama, the God of Death. Savitri tended to her dying husband under a banyan tree when several messengers of death came but left empty-handed after refusing to give him up. The God of death Yama descended and asked for her husband’s soul. Seeing her devotion, he granted her an advantage where she asked for the well-being of her in-laws' family. Yama granted another boon to her where she asked for the well-being of her parents. Yama was next at the gate of Yama's home with the husband's soul, he saw Savitri persisted in staying. After seeing this, he granted her a third boon, in which she asked for a son. Savitri then asked how she could have children without her husband, and upon seeing this irrefutable logic stuck in Yama's boon, Savitri went back to Earth with her husband.