Eleven thousand rudraksha and a night of kathak: Durgakund's Kushmanda temple sends Sawan off with a bhajan sandhya

Durgakund's Aadishakti Maa Kushmanda temple spent Sawan Purnima under eleven thousand rudraksha beads. The shringar was done by Pandit Rishabh Dube, who set the beads over the deity along with new garments and jewellery, and a large crowd gathered through the day for darshan. A grand aarti followed, and prasad was distributed to everyone who had waited. The night belonged to music. A bhajan sandhya organised by the lyricist Kanhaiya Dube filled the temple, moving between devotional songs and the folk registers Banaras keeps for the closing of the monsoon month. Students of Dr. Mamta Tandon performed kathak between the singing, and a succession of local artists took the microphone through the evening. Once the programme ended, the temple's head, Pandit Dhanni Shankar Dube, honoured the performers and organisers with mementos and offerings. Kushmanda is one of the nine forms of the goddess in the Navadurga sequence, and her Kashi seat is at Durgakund. Sawan Purnima is the monsoon month's closing note, and this was one of the quieter ways the city marked it — no procession, no barricades, no crowd management plan. Just a sanctum wrapped in rudraksha, a hall that stayed full past dark, and an evening that ran as long as the singers had songs.

Compiled by HelloBanaras from public sources: KTV Varanasi