Walk into any kirana shop in the first week of October and you will find the same grain sitting in four different sacks, under four different names — bhagar, varai, vari, samo. Same grain. Different corner of Maharashtra. It is the single most confusing thing about shopping for upvas, and it catches out even people who have kept fasts their whole lives, because the flour version gets called something else again.
Navratri this year begins with Ghatasthapana on Sunday, 11 October 2026, and runs until Vijayadashami on 20 October. That gives you about three weeks. Here is what the words mean, what you actually need, and roughly how much of it to keep at home.
Bhagar, varai, vari, samo — one grain, several names
All four names refer to barnyard millet, the small round grain that becomes upvas khichdi. Bhagar is the common Marathi name in western Maharashtra; varai and vari turn up in the Konkan and parts of Marathwada; samo or sama is the name you will hear from Gujarati and North Indian neighbours. If a recipe asks for one and your packet says another, you already have the right thing.
You will also see bhagar sold as black or white. The difference is how far the grain has been polished: the darker one is left closer to how it comes off the field and tends to cook with a firmer bite, the whiter one is more polished and cooks softer. Neither is more "correct" than the other; households simply grow up on one and stay with it.
UmedMart's whole-grain bhagar at the moment is DHAN LAXMI Bhagar, 500 g, ₹172, packed by Dhan Laxmi SHG in Nandurbar.
Grain or flour? They are not interchangeable
This is where most of the trouble starts. Whole bhagar grain makes khichdi and upvas bhaat. Ground bhagar — sold as bhagar pith, bhagar flour or varai flour, all the same thing — makes bhakri, thalipeeth and a quick sheera. You cannot grind one into the other at the last minute and get a good result, and you cannot make bhakri from whole grain. If your household eats both, buy both.
Currently available:
- GARGI Bhagar Pith, 500 g, ₹180 — Gargi Women SHG, Nashik. Also in a 1 kg pack at ₹252, which works out cheaper per kilo if you are feeding a full house.
- SHREE Varai Flour, 500 g, ₹210 — Shree Mahila Utpadak Gat, Jalna. Sold under the varai name; identical use.
- Yashasri Annabhau Bhagar Flour, 400 g, ₹153 — from Beed, the smallest pack of the three, good if you only make bhakri once or twice.
Rajgira: lahi and pith do very different jobs
Rajgira is amaranth — a seed rather than a cereal grain, which is why it is accepted in most fasting kitchens. It reaches you in two forms and people regularly buy the wrong one.
Rajgira lahi is popped amaranth. It is already cooked. You eat it as is, stir it into milk, or mix it with jaggery to press laddu. On a fast day when there is no time or no appetite for a full meal, lahi is the thing you want in the cupboard — it needs nothing but a bowl. ARYA Rajgira Lahi comes from Arya SHG in Amravati in 125 g at ₹156, 250 g at ₹204 and 500 g at ₹324.
Rajgira pith is the flour, for puri and thalipeeth, and it has to be cooked. If a recipe says "rajgira" without saying which, look at whether it is being fried or eaten from the bowl.
Sabudana here means ready-to-fry, not raw pearls
Worth knowing before you order: UmedMart's sabudana range is almost entirely ready-made and sun-dried — papad, chakali and vadi — rather than loose sabudana pearls for khichdi. These are made by SHGs in batches, dried in the sun, and sent out to be fried or roasted at home. They keep for months in a tin and they solve the 4 p.m. problem on a fast day better than anything else.
The names are worth decoding too. A papad is the thin round that puffs up in oil; chakali is the coiled spiral; a vadi is a thicker cut piece that stays chewier in the middle. And where you see batata in the name, potato has been worked into the dough — it fries up softer and less glassy than plain sabudana, and some people prefer it precisely for that.
- SAIRAM Sabudana Papad, 250 g, ₹166.06 — Sairam SHG, Latur. The smallest pack, good for trying.
- UNNATI Shabudana Papad, 1 kg, ₹286 and UNNATI Shabudana Batata Papad, 1 kg, ₹286 — Unnati Women SHG, Dhule.
- UNNATI Shabudana Batata Chakali, 1 kg, ₹312.
- BHATAI MATA Sabudana Chakali, 500 g, ₹324 — Bhatai Mata SHG, Dhule.
- SIDDHI GRUH UDYOG Shabudana Batata Vadi, 500 g, ₹286 — Shivashankar SHG, Dhule.
If you would rather have the bhagar version of the same thing, there is RAYGAD Bhagar Papad, 200 g, ₹172 from Latur and MAHAMAYA Alu Bhagar Papad, 200 g, ₹163 from Yavatmal.
Shengdana, and what you fry in
Peanut runs through almost every upvas dish in Maharashtra — coarsely crushed into khichdi, roasted into ladu, set into chikki. And groundnut oil is the frying medium most fasting kitchens stick to, partly out of habit and partly because it takes the heat that sabudana papad needs.
- SARASWATI Groundnut (Shengdana) Oil, 1000 g, ₹430 — wooden-pressed, Saraswati SHG, Bhandara.
- UMANG Shengdana Ladu, 170 g, ₹198.33 and UMANG Shengdana Chikki, 180 g, ₹204.32 — Pragatishil Parivartan SHG, Parbhani. Both are peanut-and-jaggery sweets.
The things households genuinely disagree about
There is no single rulebook here, and it is worth checking with whoever keeps the fast in your home before you order rather than after. The usual points of difference: whether jaggery and peanut sweets are eaten on a fast day or only to break it; whether rock salt is required in place of ordinary salt; whether potato is allowed in the sabudana mix; and how strictly the household avoids onion and garlic through the nine days. Families who have kept the same fast for generations answer these differently and all of them are right about their own kitchen.
One practical note: jaggery-based sweets like chikki and ladu are eaten during upvas in a great many Maharashtrian homes, but not all. If you are sending a gift rather than buying for yourself, the safe choice is bhagar, flour or plain sabudana papad.
Roughly how much to keep
For a family of four where two people fast all nine days, a workable starting stock is about 1 kg of whole bhagar, 500 g of bhagar or varai flour, 250 g of rajgira lahi, and half a kilo to a kilo of ready-to-fry sabudana between papad and chakali. If everyone in the house fasts, roughly double the grain and flour. Treat this as a starting point, not a rule — how much khichdi a household eats is the kind of thing only that household knows.
Storing it through a humid October
Sun-dried papad, chakali and vadi are the fussiest thing in this list. They pull in moisture fast in October air, and a papad that has gone soft will not puff — it will sit in the oil and turn leathery. Move them out of the packet into an airtight steel dabba the day they arrive, keep them away from the stove, and if a batch has gone limp, five or six minutes spread out in the sun usually brings them back.
When frying sabudana papad, the oil wants to be properly hot but not smoking. Drop one in as a test: it should balloon within two or three seconds and stay pale. If it browns before it puffs, the oil is too hot and everything after it will taste scorched. Whole bhagar and the flours keep quietly in airtight jars — grain for months, flour best used within a couple of months, since ground grain loses its freshness faster than whole.
Order before the first week of October
These are small-batch SHG products, not factory stock. Bhagar, varai flour and sabudana papad are precisely the things that sell out in the fortnight before Navratri, and the groups making them are working to the same festival calendar as everyone else. With Ghatasthapana on 11 October, ordering in the last week of September gives the packing and delivery time to happen without anyone rushing.
Prices and availability above were checked on 18 September 2026 and can change.
Related reading
- Deshi Gul: Block, Cubes, or Powder? A Plain-English Guide to Choosing Your Jaggery — useful if you press your own rajgira laddu.
- Cow Ghee or Buffalo Ghee? A Plain-English Comparison — for households that fry upvas food in ghee rather than oil.
- Oats, Jwari, Bajri or Nachni? A Guide to DIVYNKA's Millet Cookies from Satara — the other millets in the UmedMart range, for the rest of the year.
- What Is Indrayani Rice? A Buyer's Guide to Maharashtra's Everyday Rice — what goes back on the plate after Dussehra.
- Terracotta Diya, Copper Diya, or Akash Kandil? A Diwali Buying Guide — the next festival after this one.
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