Aja Ekadashi
What it is
Aja Ekadashi — also called Annada — falls on Shravan Vad Agiyaras in the Gujarati calendar (the dark fortnight of Bhadrapada in the northern reckoning). Its presiding form of the Lord is Hrishikesh, master of the senses, and its katha belongs to the noblest of kings: Harishchandra of Ayodhya, whose name is truth itself.
Bound by a word given to sage Vishwamitra, Harishchandra gave away his entire kingdom, then had to sell his wife and son, and himself became servant to a chandala, collecting dues at the cremation ground. Yet he would not bend the truth. There the great Gautama Rishi came to him and taught him this vrat: fast on Aja Ekadashi with worship and night vigil, and all sins are dissolved. The king observed it — and the knots of his fate broke at once. His dead son breathed again, his wife and kingdom returned, and at the end he rose to the divine realm with his whole people. The Puranas weigh this single fast against the Ashvamedha yajna, and declare it fruitful in this world and beyond.
Why we observe it
Aja Ekadashi is kept for strength — the strength to hold what is right when everything else has been taken. Harishchandra did not fast to escape hardship; the vrat found him at the cremation ground, still truthful. Its lesson for the Vaishnav is nishtha: our hold on Prabhu must not loosen in the dark fortnights of life, and His hold on us never does.
The day belongs to Hrishikesh, master of the senses. Fasting places the restless senses in His hands for one day: the tongue tastes less and speaks truth, the mind repeats the Name. Falling in Shravan by the Gujarati reckoning — the very month when the havelis are fragrant with utsav and the charm of the Hindola — this quiet Vad-paksh vrat balances celebration with inwardness. In Pushtimarg bhav, hardship itself becomes seva when borne for Prabhu; the Vaishnav does not ask why the trial came but keeps serving through it, trusting as Harishchandra trusted. The promised phal is vast — sins dissolved, worlds won — but the tested heart that emerges still saying I am Yours is the truer prize.