Time: the calendar and the festivals

Hindu time is lunar. Months follow the moon; a leap month roughly every 32 months keeps them aligned with the seasons; each lunar day is a tithi. Festivals are fixed to tithis, which is why Diwali moves between October and November and Holi between late February and March.

Each festival has three layers. A story: Rama's return to Ayodhya, Krishna's birth at midnight in a prison, the Goddess's nine-night battle. A practice: lamps, colours, a fast, a puja, a particular food. And a calendar meaning — the harvest brought in, the monsoon ending, the year turning.

Fasting (vrat) runs through the calendar. Its forms range from a single meal to a full day without water, and the tradition itself insists that the sick, the pregnant, the elderly, and children are exempt. Choose the form your body can keep.

The panchang — the traditional almanac — gives each day's tithi and its auspicious windows. Dharamkira does the reading for you: every festival page shows the next date, verified against several panchangs, with a countdown, its story, and the puja that belongs to it.