Annapurna Puja

Annapurna is a combination of two words- ‘Anna’ meaning food and ‘purna’ meaning ‘filled completely’. Annapurna is the goddess of food and the kitchen. She is an avatar of Goddess Parvati who is the wife of Lord Shiva. She is the goddess of nourishment and never lets her devotees stay without food. She is also considered to be the goddess of Kashi in Uttar Pradesh. Kashi or Varanasi is called the city of light as the goddess does not only provide nourishment to the body, it provides nourishment to the soul in the form of enlightenment. She gives us the energy to attain knowledge. Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati used to play the game of dice. Once they were playing and the game became very interesting. They started betting. Parvati kept her jewels and Shiva kept his trident. Shiva lost the game and he lost his trident. So in the next game, he bet his snake to get back the trident. He lost in this game too. He played more and bet more and kept on losing. Eventually, he lost everything including his begging bowl. Shiva felt very humiliated and went to Deodar forest to meet Lord Vishnu. Lord Vishnu approached Shiva who told him everything about what had happened. Lord Vishnu then told Shiva to play the game again. He told him that he will win back everything he had lost in the next game. Shiva took Lord Vishnu’s advice and returned to play the game again. Goddess Parvati became suspicious of Shiva’s sudden turn of fortunes that led him to win back everything. She called him a cheat. This led to an argument between the two of them. Finally, Lord Vishnu appeared as if he could not take the fight anymore. He told them that the dice in the game had moved according to his wish and they were only under the illusion that they had been playing, to this Shiva added that everything materialistic was just an illusion or Maya. Everything that we possessed was an illusion. Even the food we ate was Maya. This made Goddess Parvati angry. She did not agree that food was an illusion. She said that calling food an illusion was equivalent to calling her an illusion. So in order to show Lord Shiva and the world her importance she disappeared saying that she wanted to see how the world would survive without food. Her disappearance meant that Nature came to a standstill. There were no changes in seasons. Everything became barren. The lands became infertile. Nothing grew anymore. This led to severe drought and a huge shortage of food. The Gods, humans, and demons all kept praying for food. Goddess Parvati heard the prayers and she could not see her children perishing out of hunger. So she appeared in Kashi (Varanasi) and started distributing food. Shiva realized his mistake and the fact that he was incomplete without Shakti. So he appeared before Goddess Parvati in Kashi with a begging bowl in his hands. He said her that he had realized his mistake that food could not be dismissed as an illusion and it was required to nourish the body as well as the inner soul. Since then Goddess Parvati is worshipped as the Goddess of food – Annapurna Devi. It is believed that if the food is cooked with a spirit of holiness it becomes sacred as Annapurna blesses it.