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Purohitas storm the male bastion - Pune - City - The Times of India
- Manjiri Damle
- Sixty-five-year old Vasanti Khadilkar, who studied up to her matriculation and dropped out since girls' education didn't have much social
- PUNE:
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acceptance then, never thought that she would one day be a sought-after priestess.
Khadilkar, who hails from a small town near Kolhapur, can perform any ritual and ceremony with relative ease and chant the most difficult Sanskrit mantras, without referring to any book. "When I started training to become a priestess or purohita, all I wanted was to be able to perform some rituals for my family or see if the family priest had made any mistake while doing a ritual," she recalled.
Now, however, Khadilkar has outdone herself and become a purohita for many a Pune family, who plan their family ceremonies as per her schedule. - "The purohitas are trained to conduct any ritual right from a satyanarayan pooja, naming ceremony, house-warming, weddings, sacred-thread ceremony and various types of yajnas. However, purohitas trained by the SSS do not conduct shradh or rituals done following a death," said Khadilkar.
- Kulkarni said that when the purohita his family engages was widowed a few years ago, she told him that she would not continue as a priestess in view of the society's attitude towards widows. "But I insisted that she continue the good work and be our family purohita."
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