Indrayani Devi (Lutimaru Ajima)

Among the eight sisters of the Ashtamatrika, Indrayani was extremely poor and destitute. Her children were weak, and there were no fine clothes or ornaments in her house. So the other wealthy sisters mocked her, calling her "Lutimaru" (bereft of ornaments, ill-fated).

Once, at the feast of the Pasachahre festival, all the sisters came dressed up in fine clothes and ornaments. But when the poor Lutimaru arrived in dirty clothes with her hungry children, she was made to stand outside the door, insulted, and driven off with a piece of dried roti flung at her.

Unable to bear the humiliation, Lutimaru returned home hungry with her weeping children. When she cooked a pumpkin she had bought on the way, it turned into a snake in the pot itself. In disgust she turned the pot upside down, and the snake was transformed into a large golden saanglo (sapla).

From that gold she fed her children nourishing food and made precious ornaments and garments.

At the next year's Pasachahre feast, when Lutimaru arrived wearing divine garments and diamond-studded ornaments, all the sisters seated her on the chief seat and served her eighty-four dishes.

But Lutimaru touched not the food; she took off all her ornaments and clothes, flung them over the basket, and said: "This honour is not mine — it belongs to these clothes and ornaments. Where the poor are humiliated and vanity is worshipped, I will not sit."

After that Lutimaru separated herself from the other sisters, and it became the tradition for her to celebrate her jatra alone on the day of Balachaturdashi.