{"id":11220,"date":"2012-08-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/08\/05\/raksha-bandhan-for-women-without-brothers-deities-get-rakhis-on-their-wrists\/"},"modified":"2012-08-05T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-08-05T12:00:00","slug":"raksha-bandhan-for-women-without-brothers-deities-get-rakhis-on-their-wrists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/08\/05\/raksha-bandhan-for-women-without-brothers-deities-get-rakhis-on-their-wrists\/","title":{"rendered":"Raksha Bandhan: For Women without Brothers, Deities Get Rakhis On Their Wrists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tribune.com.pk\/story\/416689\/raksha-bandhan-for-women-without-brothers-deities-get-rakhis-on-their-wrists\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>KARACHI, INDIA August 3, 2012 (tribune.com): Every year at Raksha Bandhan, a middle-aged Padma dresses in her best red sari and comes to the Laxmi Narayan Temple with a red rakhi, but without a brother. She goes up to the room where the statue of Lord Vishnu resides and tries the thread around its wrist. &#8220;He is my only brother,&#8221; she says, and carries on with her pooja.<\/p>\n<p>The girls and women who don&#8217;t have brothers or can&#8217;t be with them, like Padma, tie the rakhis around Deities at Raksha Bandhan, the festival which celebrates the bond between brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n<p>Meena, a young woman who has four sisters, says that the male Gods always protect those women who consider the Gods as Their sibling. &#8220;When my mother died, lord gave me the support and comfort I needed to bear the loss,&#8221; she says, while sitting on the stairs of Laxmi Narayan Mandir. &#8220;Just like a brother would give to his sister.&#8221; Besides Vishnu, Meena also makes sure to tie the rakhi around the wrists of her cousin, Raju, who presents her with a sari every year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The festival may seem light-hearted to some people,&#8221; says Raju, as he sits beside Meena. &#8220;But the responsibility a sister bestows on him is huge. The brother will never leave his sister alone. This is not a game for us. The thread brings with it a lot of prayers. Before the actual festival begins, women fast for 17 days and pray for their husbands and brothers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source KARACHI, INDIA August 3, 2012 (tribune.com): Every year at Raksha Bandhan, a middle-aged Padma dresses in her best red,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}