सनातन पुस्तकालय Sanatan Cultural Library

Naina Devi belongs to the Shakti-peetha geography of the north-west. Tradition holds that when Sati gave up her body at Daksha's yajna and Shiva carried her in grief across the world, Vishnu's chakra parted her form, and her eyes — naina — fell upon this hill above the Sutlej; the shrine that arose is counted among the Shakti peethas, and the Devi here is worshipped through her eyes, the murti's gaze being the heart of darshan. A gentler local tradition tells of a Gujjar cowherd, Naina, whose cow poured her milk daily upon a stone until the Devi revealed herself to him in a dream, and the temple keeps his memory in its name as well. The shrine stands close above the historic gurudwara town of Anandpur Sahib, and Sikh devotees too have old associations with the hill. Today the temple crowns a ridge over the blue sweep of Gobind Sagar lake, reached by road, by stepped footpath, and by ropeway.

The monsoon month of Shravana is the Devi's high season across the north-west hills — the same weeks fill Chintpurni and Jwala Ji — and at Naina Devi the mela begins on the Ashtami of the dark fortnight, running about nine days. Pilgrims come in jathas from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal and beyond, many walking the final climb barefoot, carrying chunris, coconuts and canopies to offer, singing bhentein and raising jaikaras of "Jai Mata Di" that roll up the hillside. The temple keeps near round-the-clock darshan through the fair, with havan and special poojas on the Ashtami days; langars and sabeels line the approach roads, and the administration regulates the queues along the climb — a discipline taken seriously since a tragic stampede at the 2008 mela led to a complete overhaul of crowd management. A second, smaller mela fills Chaitra Navratri, but Shravan Ashtami remains the shrine's defining gathering, monsoon mist and all.

Naina Devi's mela belongs to its hill, but the devotional culture around it — bhentein, chunri offerings, the vow-and-thanksgiving relationship with Mata Rani — is exactly the tradition that Punjabi and Himachali families have carried to Canada. An Ottawa household can keep the Shravan Ashtami days with a small darbar at home: the Devi's picture draped with a chunri, a lit jyoti, bhentein sung or played, and halwa-chana prasad shared — in effect a Mata ki Chowki timed to the mela. Families with roots in the region often video-call relatives making the climb or watch the shrine's darshan online. Those visiting India in the monsoon can reach the temple easily from Chandigarh via Anandpur Sahib, combining darshan with the gurudwaras below — though the mela's densest days call for patience. The site's calendar gives the Shravana month's span for each year in Ottawa.