Karva Chauth: 'The dignified role of a married lady'

We invited readers to share stories of their most unforgettable Karva Chauth with us to celebrate the occasion today. Here is yet another response, from Shilpa Mantra:

This will be my eighth Karva Chauth and I'll do everything to make it more memorable than the previous one.

I buy my own outfit, arrange for sweets, mehendi, make-up, menu, handle my kids and job and do the puja on the terrace with other ladies and their husbands.

Then I'll return home to my husband, so he can give me water and sweets -- he will be done with his own dinner, along with his parents by then. He does the ritual with annoyance, since he finds it baseless and unneeded. However, I grew up in a family where this was the dignified role of a married lady.

It's a serene ritual for me, which I dedicate to a husband who I hope will reciprocate with love and care like many other husbands do -- if not in this birth, then probably the next.