Rongali Bihu (Assamese New Year)

When it falls

Seven days from the last day of the Assamese month of Chot, around 13 to 14 April, the day the Sun enters Meṣa (Aries). Assam keeps three Bihus a year: this spring one is the largest.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

Rongāli means joyful. Bohāg Bihu opens the Assamese year at the start of the sowing season, when the rains are about to come and the first fields are ploughed. The other two Bihus are Kāti (October, the lean month, with a single lamp in the paddy field) and Māgh (January, the harvest feast).

The Bihu dance is the festival's heart: young men and women in mekhelā chādor dance to the dhol, the pepa (buffalo horn pipe) and the gogona (a bamboo mouth-harp), singing Bihu geet, the courtship songs of the season. It is the state's emblem; over eleven thousand dancers performed together in Guwahati in 2023 for a world record.

How the day is kept

• Goru Bihu on the first day: the cattle are washed in the river, smeared with turmeric and black gram paste, given new tethers and fed gourd and brinjal; they are the year's wealth.
• Mānuh Bihu on the second: new clothes, and the young touch the feet of the elders and receive the gāmosā, the red-bordered woven cloth that is Assam's gift.
• Bihu performances on stages in every town for the week, and the open-air Bihu of the villages under a tree.
• The husori: bands of singers go house to house with blessings for the year, and are given rice cakes and a little money.

At the table

Piṭhā (rice cakes) of many kinds, til piṭhā rolled with sesame, ghilā piṭhā fried, and lāru, the balls of coconut and sesame; chirā (flattened rice) with curd and jaggery.

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