Puthandu (Tamil New Year)

When it falls

13 or 14 April, the first day of the Tamil month of Chittirai, when the Sun enters Meṣa (Aries). Sri Lankan Tamils keep the same day as the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

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

The story

Puthu āṇḍu is the new year. The Tamil year has sixty names in a cycle, the same as the Telugu and Kannada one, so the almanac names the year and the priest reads its outlook. Tamil Nadu moved the official new year to 14 January for a few years from 2008 and moved it back in 2011; the calendar of the temples never changed.

The day is the one the whole Tamil world shares: Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, and every temple town abroad. In Sri Lanka the astrologer fixes the hour (nallanēram) for the first meal, the first work and the first money, and the whole island stops for it.

How the day is kept

• The kani: on the night before, a tray is laid with fruit, betel, gold, a mirror, new clothes, rice and flowers, and the family looks at it as the first sight of the year at dawn.
• An oil bath, new clothes and the temple; at Madurai the day opens the Chittirai festival and the marriage of Mīnākṣī and Sundareśvarar.
• Pañcāṅga paṭanam: the year's almanac read aloud in the temple after the pūjā.
• The kolam at the door, mango leaves strung across it, and the first meal at the auspicious hour with the family together.

At the table

Māṅgāy pachadi, raw mango with jaggery, neem flower, chilli, salt and tamarind: sweet, bitter, sour, hot and salt in one dish, for the year as it will come. Then a feast with pāyasam and vaḍai.

More new years