Vishu (Kerala New Year)

When it falls

14 or 15 April, the first day of the Malayalam month of Mēṭam, when the Sun enters Meṣa (Aries). The Malayalam year formally begins in August; Vishu is the astronomical 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

Vishu means equal: the day was once the equinox, when day and night matched, before the slow drift of the sidereal year carried the Sun's entry into Meṣa three weeks past it. It is kept as the day of first sight: what you see first at dawn sets the year, so the sight is prepared.

The Vishukkaṇi is that sight: in the pūjā room a bell-metal vessel (uruli) is filled with rice, a golden cucumber, a jackfruit, coconut halves, mangoes, the yellow koṇṇa flowers of the season (Cassia fistula) that bloom for the day, a mirror, gold, a folded cloth and a lit lamp, before an image of Kṛṣṇa. The eldest woman arranges it at night and leads each member of the family to it at dawn with their eyes closed.

How the day is kept

• The kaṇi at dawn, eyes shut until the moment of standing in front of it; then the family goes to see the kaṇi at the temple, Guruvāyūr above all, where the queue starts at midnight.
• Vishukkaineeṭṭam: elders give coins to the young and to the household's helpers, the first money of the year.
• Crackers in the morning, since Vishu, not Dīpāvali, is Kerala's day for fireworks.
• A Vishu sadya at midday, in the same order and on the same banana leaf as the Onam one.

At the table

Vishu kañji, rice and coconut milk porridge, and Vishu kaṭṭa, rice cakes with jaggery syrup, in the north of the state; the sadya with māmpaḻa pulissery (ripe mango curry) and cakka pradhaman (jackfruit pāyasam) in the south.

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