śrī saṃtoṣī mātā kī āratī

A Hindi arati to Santoshi Mata, sung to the standard tune, and it belongs to a goddess whose worship is more recent than almost anything else in this corpus and whose vow is kept on Fridays. The verses describe her as a bride would be described: fine golden cloth put on, diamonds and emeralds flashing, the ornaments taken up. What she is asked for is stated in the name — santosha is contentment — so the arati asks for ease and wealth for the one who serves her rather than for release. Its observance is famously specific about what may not be eaten while the vow is kept, and the whole devotion spread across northern India in the nineteen-seventies from a film, which is a modern history of a kind the older aratis in this collection do not have.