Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year)

When it falls

14 April in Bangladesh by the reformed calendar, 14 or 15 April in West Bengal by the traditional almanac, the first day of the solar month of Boiśākh.

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

The story

The Bengali calendar was fixed in the reign of Akbar, who wanted a solar year for collecting the land tax that the lunar Islamic year could not give the farmers, and Boiśākh is its first month. The merchants' custom of clearing the year's debts and opening a new ledger (hāl khātā) on the day is the festival's oldest ritual.

In Dhaka the day is the country's largest secular festival. The Chhāyānaṭ singers greet the dawn under the banyan at Ramna Park with Tagore's Eso he Boiśākh, and the Fine Arts students carry the Maṅgal Śobhājātrā, the procession of huge painted masks and animals, through the streets, a custom of 1989 that UNESCO inscribed in 2016.

How the day is kept

• Hāl khātā: shopkeepers invite their customers, close the old account book with sweets, and open the new one with a mark of vermilion.
• New clothes, white and red for women in Bangladesh; visits to elders; fairs (Boiśākhī melā) with folk theatre, wrestling and puppet shows.
• In Kolkata the temples of Kālīghāṭ and Dakṣiṇeśvar fill before dawn, and the day opens the year for weddings and shop signs.
• The Maṅgal Śobhājātrā of Dhaka and the Ramna gathering, both since the 1980s and now the day's emblem.

At the table

Pāntā bhāt (rice soaked overnight in water) with fried hilsa and green chilli in Bangladesh; in Kolkata, a full Bengali lunch and the sweets the shops send with the new ledger.

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