योगिनी एकादशी व्रत कथा (आषाढकृष्णपक्षः)

In the Padma Purana's Uttara Khanda, chapter 52, King Yudhishthira asks Lord Sri Krishna:

Bhagwan Sri Krishna replied:

In the celestial city of Alakapuri ruled King Kubera, the treasurer of the gods and a devout worshipper of Lord Shiva, who performed an elaborate Shiva puja every morning using fresh lotuses gathered from the Manasarovar lake. A Yaksha gardener named Hemamali held the daily duty of plucking these lotuses before dawn and delivering them in time for the king's worship. Hemamali was deeply devoted to his beautiful wife, Svarupavati, and the two lived together in evident happiness within the celestial city.

One morning, after gathering the lotuses as usual, Hemamali returned home and, captivated by his wife's beauty, lingered in her company and forgot his sacred duty entirely. The flowers never reached the palace that day. At the appointed hour, King Kubera sat ready for his worship, but no gardener arrived and no lotuses came, so the morning puja could not begin.

Unable to perform his worship of Lord Shiva on time, Kubera dispatched messengers to learn what had delayed his gardener, and they found Hemamali at home, absorbed in his wife's company, the lotuses forgotten beside him. Kubera summoned Hemamali before the court and, enraged that a devotee's negligence had interrupted Shiva's worship, roared:

The curse took hold at once. Hemamali fell from Alakapuri to the mortal earth, his celestial radiance extinguished and his skin breaking out in painful, oozing sores. For years he wandered the dense forests in hunger, fever, and grief, separated from his wife and his former glory, weeping day and night over the single moment of carelessness that had ruined his life. In time his wandering brought him to the Himalayan ashram of the immortal sage Markandeya, whose body shone with the luster of Brahma. Hemamali kept his distance out of shame and prostrated from afar. Looking upon the suffering Yaksha with compassion, the sage asked:

Hemamali confessed the whole truth without concealment: his neglect of Kubera's worship, the curse that followed, and his years of remorse.

Pleased that Hemamali had answered honestly, Markandeya smiled with grace and said:

Hemamali followed the sage's instruction with sincere faith, keeping the fast and praying to Lord Vamana through the day and night. On the Dvadashi morning that followed, by the divine potency of Yogini Ekadashi, every trace of his leprosy vanished. His skin became as radiant and flawless as molten gold, and he returned joyfully to Alakapuri, where Kubera welcomed him back and reunited him with Svarupavati.

Devotees observing Yogini Ekadashi begin the day with sankalpa, the formal vow taken before sunrise that dedicates the coming fast to Lord Vishnu in his form as Vamana and names its purpose, whether relief from illness, release from a past wrong, or simple devotion. Through the day, the fast generally excludes grain entirely; many devotees keep a water-only or phalahar, fruit-only, discipline, following the same rigor Hemamali himself observed in the forest. Puja is offered to Lord Vamana at the customary morning and evening hours, with sandalwood paste, white flowers, and Tulsi leaves presented at the altar, and the night is kept in vigil through bhajans, devotional songs, and the retelling of this very katha rather than in sleep.

The fast is broken, parana, only on Dvadashi morning after sunrise and after the completion of the day's prayers, never before the prescribed hour even for a devotee who has struggled through the night's discipline. Many households mark the occasion further by feeding Brahmins and offering charity before taking their own first meal. The katha's teaching rests on this sequence: a single lapse of duty, however small it seemed to Hemamali at the time, carried a consequence he had to bear in full across many years of suffering; yet a single vow, kept with complete sincerity and confessed without concealment, proved sufficient to undo even a curse as severe as leprosy. Yogini Ekadashi is remembered, above all, as the fast that restores what a moment's carelessness has cost, provided the devotee returns to duty with the same wholeheartedness that first went missing.