The festival marks the end of the monsoon season and beginning of autumn. More than hundred girls under the age of nine gathered for the tradition of worshiping young pre-pubescent girls as manifestations of the divine female energy. The ritual holds a strong religious significance in Newar community. It is a community affair held primarily to save small girls from diseases and bad luck in the years to come. Photo: A young Nepalese girl dressed as a Kumari or living Goddess, smiles for camera as she waits for Kumari puja at Hanuman Dhoka, Basantapur Durbar Square in Katmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, September 17, 2013. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

Members of a teenage girl gang convincing an unwilling recruit to join the gang, circa 1955. (Photo by Vecchio/Three Lions)

Girls stand on the rocks consulting a magazine as they carry their trays with fruits for sell, in Dakar, Senegal on February 28, 2021. (Photo by Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)

An Afghan girl stand in the doorway of her home in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, March 29, 2021. (Photo by Rahmat Gul/AP Photo)

A girl plays in a waterlogged street following a heavy monsoon rainfall in Mumbai on June 9, 2021. (Photo by Sujit Jaiswal/AFP Photo)

A girl walks an Akita-inu dog dressed in a military uniform in Vladivostok, Russia on April 9, 2019. (Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS)

A girl looks on after a fire broke out in a slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh, March 11, 2020. (Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)