Bollywood is celebrating the 50th year of Sholay, which was a clutter-breaking work that went from superhighway to cult over half a century. But another film also hit that milestone at the same time, Jai Santoshi Maa, which went on to become a huge success. Becoming a box-office hit is one thing; reaching remote corners of the country and starting a religious revolution is quite an achievement.

The city is in the grip of Ganpati fever, and mythology says that Goddess Santoshi is Lord Ganesh’s daughter, so maybe it’s time to revisit the craze for that film and its music. India is a religious country with multitudes of Hindu deities in every region, with their own legends, rituals and bhajans. Goddesses have the same kind of hold over devotees as Gods—in fact, there is often a criticism voiced about patriarchal India, that they worship goddesses but mistreat women. But till this film, directed by Vijay Sharma, came out, Goddess Santoshi was hardly known outside very small pockets of North India.

Mythological films had their popularity in cinema, and, later, television came up with a series of shows based on the epics—the Ramayan and the Mahabharat—that were trendsetters, and even today, shows about deities are hits on television. Jai Santoshi Maa was a film that reached even rural women who were not major moviegoers back then but arrived in droves carrying pooja material to worship the goddess on screen, entering the theatre barefoot, like........

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