Santhoshi Matha Pooja Santoshi Mata Pooja is usually performed for a period of 16 Weeks on Friday.

You will be required to have a Santoshi Matt Photo, the Pooja book which contains the story and for prasad you will need roasted chana, jaggery and green banana. "You are not supposed to eat or touch anything which is sour like Curd, Lemon Etc"

On a Friday morning have head bath and place the photo in a clean Pooja area and put a small Kalash. Place Santhoshimatha's photo and decorate it with flowers. Keep channa (soaked in water for 6 hours in water) or puffed bengal gram along with jaggery piece and bananas as prasadam. Light diya before the Goddess. Chant the mantras and read the story and give aarti to the Goddess and have prasadam. You can do fasting the entire day or can have food only once in a day (may be supper or dinner). You are not supposed to eat anything sour on the day of the Pooja...

You need to do this for 16 weeks on Friday, and after you finish the 16 weeks you will be required to do Udyapan, i.e. you will be required to offer food to kids and remember not to feed them anything sour and not to give them any cash, as they might use the cash to buy something sour.

First gather the things required and then start the Pooja.

Things required for the Pooja:

1 kalash betel leaves flowers dry whole channa and jaggery for prasad camphor for aarti agarbatti diyas turmeric kumkum photo of santoshima coconut for kalash (have to continue

with the same coconut till you complete Pooja) a wooden stool for placing the moorthi rice mixed with turmeric.

Immense research must have gone into this foll. article on Santoshi Maa at http://free.freespeech.org/manushi/ Simple Vrat and Rituals

The simplicity of the vrat is striking: it is be observed on a series of Fridays (some pamphlets prescribe that it be continued until one's wish is granted; others specify four months or sixteen weeks, a timespan popularised by the film) by doing puja or ceremonial worship with flowers, incense, and an oil lamp before an image of Santoshi Ma and offering her a bowl of raw sugar and roasted chickpeas (gur-chana).9 These are simple, inexpensive foodstuffs-the former a raw ingredient for making sweetmeats, the latter a common snack, especially of the poor-and the instructions require a very small quantity of each-in effect, a few pennies worth.10 That Santoshi Ma is satisfied with such offerings again underscores her benevolent character as well as her accessibility to poor devotees. The worshiper should take a bit of gurchana in hand and recite or listen to the katha. Afterwards, the offerings in the bowl may be fed to a cow, or distributed as the goddess's prasad. The only other stricture is that the performer of the vrat should eat but one meal during the day and should not eat, or serve to anyone else, sour or bitter foods. When one's wish has been granted, one is required to serve a festive meal-which should likewise not include any sour dishes-to eight boys; this ceremony of thanksgiving, common to many vrats, is known as udyapan or "bringing to conclusion."