Ugadi and Gudi Padwa

How it is kept

1. 01

   Raising the gudi at the door at sunrise

2. 02

   Ugadi pachadi of six tastes

3. 03

   An oil bath, new clothes and mango-leaf torans

4. 04

   Panchanga Shravanam, the reading of the new year’s almanac

5. 05

   Shobhayatras for the Hindu new year in Maharashtra’s towns

01The first day of creation

Yugadi means the beginning of an age. The dharmashastra digests quote a verse of the Brahma Purana that Brahma created the world on the first day of the bright half of Chaitra, at sunrise, and the day is kept as the birthday of the cosmos. In the north the Vikram Samvat year turns on this day, and Navaratri begins. Kashmiri Pandits keep it as Navreh, when the first sight of the morning is a thali of rice, walnuts and the new Panchang. Sindhis celebrate Cheti Chand, the birthday of Jhulelal.

02Gudi and pachadi

In Maharashtra a bamboo staff is dressed in a bright silk cloth, topped with an upturned copper or silver kalash, and hung with neem leaves, mango leaves, a garland of sugar crystals and marigolds; the gudi is raised at the right of the door or on the roof as a flag of victory. Families eat a paste of neem leaves and jaggery. In Karnataka and the Telugu lands the Ugadi pachadi mixes neem flowers, raw mango, tamarind, jaggery, salt and chilli, so that the year’s six tastes, bitter and sweet, are taken together. In the evening the purohit reads the Panchanga Shravanam, the forecast of the new year.

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