Samantha Ruth Prabhu has undergone a ceremony called Kalaa Aavarana, also known as Sri Kalpam, as she nears the end of her pregnancy. The actress shared details of the ritual herself, and it isn't your standard baby shower.

The practice comes out of the Srividya tradition and centres on the 94 kalas, or divine qualities, associated with the goddess. During the ceremony, sacred water and mantras are used to cleanse and awaken the body's seven chakras, a process meant to invite what practitioners describe as the presence of consciousness into the mother-to-be.

What stood out to Samantha, by her own account, was the way the ritual frames the mother herself. Not as a vessel, but as Devi. The one through whom another life takes shape.

"It is a blessing for the child growing within her and also for the woman who is being born into a new version of herself," she said of the experience.

The Sri Chakra and the nine enclosures

After the abhishekam, Samantha was seated at the centre of a Sri Chakra Yantram, a geometric design built from nine enclosures, each representing a stage in a spiritual journey. At the very core sits the bindu, a single point said to symbolise the source of all creation and the presence of Lalita Tripurasundari.

As part of the ceremony, priests recited the Devi Khadgamaala, invoking the names of the deities tied to each of the nine enclosures. Samantha said sitting through the chanting while understanding what was being invoked, for herself and for the baby, made the experience land differently.

She hasn't offered a blow by blow of who conducted the ritual or where it took place, and there's no word yet on how far along she is. What's confirmed is the bigger picture. Samantha married filmmaker Raj Nidimoru in December 2025, and the couple announced they were expecting in June 2026. This will be her first child.

The Kalaa Aavarana isn't a ceremony most fans would have encountered before, and Samantha's decision to walk through its meaning in some depth, rather than just posting a photo, is clearly deliberate. It fits a pattern she's followed through this pregnancy: sharing selectively, and on her own terms, rather than feeding the usual maternity-shoot cycle.

What comes next is straightforward enough. A due date nobody's confirmed publicly, and, presumably, an announcement once the baby actually arrives. Until then, this ritual is the closest look fans have gotten into how Samantha is choosing to mark the run-up to motherhood.