In the temple, puja follows the rhythm of the deity treated as a living resident, woken, bathed, dressed, fed and put to rest at fixed hours, and the great festivals magnify this service to a civic scale. In the home, a shrine holding images or prints of the family's chosen deities is tended daily, often by the women of the household, with lamp, incense and a few flowers and offerings of food. The practice does not depend on priestly mediation: the direct offering of the devotee, made with love, is held sufficient, and the Bhagavad Gita has Krishna promise to accept even a leaf, a flower, a fruit or water offered with devotion.
The offering of the lamp, the presenting of food, and the sharing of the returned prasada recur across the diversity of Hindu worship as its common grammar, uniting the grandest temple ritual and the smallest household rite in a single gesture of service and communion with the divine.