Chhath Puja is the most demanding festival in the Hindu calendar and, for Bihar, easily the most important. Four days, two 36-hour fasts without even water, and rituals performed standing waist-deep in a river at dawn.
If you are observing it for the first time, or explaining it to someone who has never seen it, here is what actually happens and why.
What Chhath Puja is
Chhath is worship of Surya Dev, the sun god, and Chhathi Maiya, regarded as his sister and the protector of children. It is one of the very few Hindu festivals dedicated to the sun, and among the very few where offerings are made to the setting sun as well as the rising one.
It is also unusual in having no priest and no idol. The devotee performs everything directly, without intermediary. That directness is a large part of why people describe it as the most personal festival they observe.
Chhath falls in the month of Kartik, six days after Diwali. It is observed across Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Nepal, and now anywhere Bihari families have settled — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and increasingly abroad.
The four days
Day 1 — Nahay Khay
The devotee bathes, ideally in a river, and the home is cleaned thoroughly. One sattvik meal is eaten, traditionally bottle gourd (lauki) with chana dal and rice, cooked without onion or garlic. From this point the kitchen is treated as ritually pure.
Day 2 — Kharna
A full day of fasting without water. After sunset, the devotee eats a single meal of rasiao-kheer — rice pudding made with jaggery — along with roti and fruit. The moment this meal ends, the 36-hour waterless fast begins.
Day 3 — Sandhya Arghya
The most photographed day. Families walk to the riverbank carrying bamboo soop baskets loaded with thekua, fruit, sugarcane and coconut. Standing in the water, they offer arghya to the setting sun.
Offering to a setting sun is deliberate. It acknowledges decline and endings as worthy of gratitude, not only beginnings.
Day 4 — Usha Arghya
Before dawn, families return to the same spot and offer arghya to the rising sun. The fast breaks after this. Prasad is distributed, and the festival ends.
Why thekua is the main prasad
Every item offered during Chhath must meet strict conditions. It must be sattvik, made without onion or garlic, prepared in a ritually clean space, and it must keep for days without spoiling since prasad is distributed widely afterwards.
Thekua satisfies all of these. Wheat flour and jaggery are both considered pure offerings. There is no milk or khoya to spoil. And because it is slow-fried until almost all moisture leaves the dough, it stays good for weeks in the open.
There is a practical dimension too. Chhath prasad is shared with entire neighbourhoods, so families make it in very large quantities. Thekua scales well — the dough can be made in bulk and shaped by many hands at once, which is why thekua-making the night before Sandhya Arghya is itself a family gathering.
For the full story, read why thekua became the chief prasad of Chhath.
What else goes in the soop
- Thekua — the principal offering, usually made in desi ghee for Chhath.
- Sugarcane — whole stalks, often used to build a canopy at the ghat.
- Thakua and kasar laddoo — rice-flour sweets in some families.
- Seasonal fruit — banana, coconut, sweet lime, custard apple.
- Ginger, turmeric and radish — offered fresh with the plant still attached where possible.
Observing Chhath away from Bihar
Most families now observing Chhath do so outside Bihar, and the practical challenges are real — finding clean water, sourcing the right ingredients, and above all making thekua in a kitchen and a schedule that were not designed for it.
Artificial ghats in city parks have become common in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. For prasad, many families order thekua rather than making it, particularly when both partners work. There is no ritual objection to this provided the thekua itself is made purely — jaggery not sugar, no preservatives, no onion or garlic anywhere near the preparation.
Preparing early
If you are ordering thekua for Chhath, order well ahead. Demand across Bihar and the diaspora spikes sharply in the weeks before the festival, and genuine small-batch makers cannot scale up indefinitely.
Our desi ghee thekua is the customary choice for prasad. It is made in rural Bihar with pure jaggery, fried slowly in ghee, with no preservatives or artificial flavours.
