Megha’s Wishful Calendar

Megha was a very intelligent kid who always had lot of questions to ask. In fact, teachers used to be scared of her questions because they couldn’t answer them. Her curiosity was her strength and she never let any opportunity go out of her hand to find out answers for all the questions that she had in her mind.

One day she asked her science teacher, “Madam why do we have calendar? What is the significance?”

Surprised at her question, the teacher replied, “Megha, calendars are used to make life simpler, to keep account of days, special occasions and seasons. It is also to deal with lot of plans and schedules that we make.”

“Just like you have days, weeks and months, you have calendar to tell you all those details.”

Puzzled Megha continues to ask another question, “Madam, what if instead of calendar we had stars and constellation to help us count the days?”

Teacher replied, “That’s a very interesting ask Megha! We do have panchang which follows the traditional way of Hindu timekeeping. I suggest you should read more about it.”

Megha quite excitedly said, “That’s interesting Ma’am, thank you for sharing! I’ll ask my grand father more about this, he’ll well versed in finding thithi and muhurthams.”

Later that day, after school, Megha rushed to her grand father to clear her doubts about her newly learnt fancy word, “Panchang”.

She asked her grandpa, “grappy, could you tell me in detail about Panchang, how is it made, what all does it tell and can it be used in place of calendar?”

Her grandfather was quite delighted that she asked this question. He said, “Oh! my little Megha, where did you learn about Panchang?”

She replied, “My science teacher had mentioned about it and I instantly knew that you would be the right person to go to!”

“Okay then…let me tell you about you in detail about Panchang. Panchang is a record for timekeeping and it contains tabulations of the positions of Sun, Moon and the other planets. It helps to understand how they are aligned with respect to each other and how they impact each of us based on our Raashi’s!”

Megha then replied, “Ah ha! Now I get why Amma keeps telling it is Ashtami, you shouldn’t do any auspicious work today.”

Grandpa and Megha then had a long laughter together!