Clocks, Calendars and the Panchangam

 

There were clocks everywhere in the house, but none showed the correct time after the old man died. The clocks had been under his care. He wound those that needed winding and changed the batteries of the rest. Most hung within his reach, and for those he could not reach, he had a small stool on which, even when frail with age, he climbed to tend to them.

Time dictated the old man’s life. If the clocks reminded him of the hour, the Hindu calendar he bought every year from a shop in Scott Road in Brickfields, reminded him of time’s location in the day, the month and the year. The Panchangam, which arrived annually by post from India with a declaration it was cleared by Customs, informed him of cosmic time, mapped against the movements of stars and planets.

For him, a day was not just hours of light and darkness. Each hour was shaped by celestial movements visible only in the Panchangam. Its pages divided time according to its terrestrial influence. There were good periods and bad periods, and he managed the affairs of his family according to these times. He was the conductor of their collective movements. “Not now,” he would say, looking up from the curled pages of the almanac. “Wait until 10:30. The Kalam is not right.”

And his children, raised under his authority, waited. They accepted his injunctions not merely out of obedience but out of an understanding that forces existed beyond their knowledge. If they must not walk into the rain without an umbrella, there must also be reasons for not stepping out at a certain hour that their father understood. If he said the haircut must happen on a Tuesday or a journey must begin before the sun hit a certain angle, they adjusted their lives to fit the cosmic slot he identified.

But as time progressed, the Panchangam began to lose its grip. Life was no longer shaped by celestial rhythms but by the schedules imposed by the state—bus and train timetables, office hours, school bells, payment deadlines, and the fixed times of public events. Time was no longer something to be interpreted; it was something to be obeyed. When it came to knowledge, no one turned to the Panchangam anymore, nor to books or a teacher’s notes. It was everywhere now, scattered into the digital ether. Turn on a computer, type a few words, and a hundred responses appeared, maybe thousands.

The children of his children practised a form of polite resistance. They smiled and nodded when he warned them of an inauspicious hour, then quietly checked their wristwatches, calculating whether they could leave just early enough to beat the traffic but late enough to satisfy his ritual. They moved between two worlds: the ancient rhythms of the Panchangam and the frantic, linear demands of English‑medium schools, which started and ended on fixed times unaltered by anything the Panchangam said.

By the time the great‑grandchildren arrived, the resistance had turned into a scoff. To them, time was a digital print on a smartphone that was flat, soulless, indifferent. They were educated according to prescribed curricula that made no mention of the Panchangam and lived for holidays gazetted by the government and not decided by the phases of the moon. A “good time” was a Friday night at the mall, regardless of where the planets sat in the heavens.

As the years pressed on, the transformations in the lives of the old man’s family came not from changes predicted in the Panchangam but from the way life was ordered by employment, holidays and the mundane timetables of buses and trains. We are now untethered from time beyond the clock and calendar. Retirement, moving from government quarters to their own homes, the incessant need to renovate their abode, the upgrading of their cars and the pressure to educate the young through schools and universities ordered their lives. There was also the inevitable but quiet greying of the hair. These were changes dictated by biology and economics and not by any grander cosmic order. We were merely aging in a line, moving further away from the ancestral script.

Then came the cancer.

To the doctors, the tumour in the old man’s pancreas was not foretold by any almanac but revealed by blood tests and x‑rays showing cells that no longer obeyed the body’s script. They spoke of prognosis, malignancy and palliative care, mapping out a timeline of inevitable decline. They looked at their charts and saw a man running out of time.

But the old man was looking at a different map.

While the clocks ticked on the walls, he spent his final weeks on the edge of the bed, his frail fingers marking dates on the Panchangam. He drew a red circle around two dates, thirty-five days apart. As the family learnt after his death, the first was an inauspicious day, the day he was diagnosed with the disease. The other was the day he died, an auspicious day according to the Panchangam.

When the end came, it was a quiet rebellion against every medical textbook. There was no gasping for air, no thrashing against the predicted pain. He didn’t die according to the doctor’s timeline; he died according to his own. He had seen his location in the cosmos, found the right Tithi, and simply let go.

He left the family with a peace that made the doctor’s predictions irrelevant. While they were busy measuring time in seconds and minutes, he had been living in a version of time that foretold how he would live and die.

Now, with the old man gone, the clocks have surrendered. They no longer need to be wound because no one is worried about the “quality” of the hour. We are “educated,” we are “global,” and we are utterly lost. We know exactly what time it is, but we no longer have any idea where we are in the cosmos.

Marooned in a Digital Maze

 

When modern life collapses because two bills go unpaid and domestic peace hangs on a WiFi signal.

Woke up to a nightmare this morning. 

The Internet was not working. 

Tried using the very same Internet connection to find the problem. 

Bill not paid; service suspended. “Pay now through our website,” the message said. How to pay through the Internet when there was no Internet?

Never mind, I thought, I’ll use my handphone — different provider, different system. 

But here came the real nightmare: that line was barred too. Payment not made. 

A double fault. And one the family, still asleep, would never forgive, because their morning ablutions won’t work without a connected phone in their hand.

So off I went hunting for the nearest centre where I could make a payment. 

Ten kilometres away. No parking anywhere. A hundred restaurants packed with breakfast eaters. The only empty spaces were “Reserved” lots with Town Board warnings threatening locked wheels for anyone foolish enough to park there.

But a desperate man becomes creative. I parked in front of a restaurant which had a reserved parking lot, walked in, ordered a meal, and told them I’d be back shortly. 

Then I marched to the Internet provider, paid the bill, and returned to the restaurant. 

I almost walked away, but that would mean being a captive to technology and dishonest at the same time.

So, I sat down, ate the meal I had strategically ordered, and walked out feeling absurdly triumphant — as if I had outsmarted the entire system for one morning.

A Reflection on the Indian New Year - Ugadi, Vaisakhi, Puthandu, Vishu

 

The many cultures that make up this country teach us many things, including how different communities understand and measure time. Amartya Sen, who has written extensively on India’s many calendars, reminds us that time itself is plural. This becomes especially clear every mid‑April, when Indian communities in Malaysia celebrate New Year, but not on the same day. Different communities follow different calendars, and therefore mark the New Year on different dates.

In 2026, Vaisakhi (Punjab) falls on 13 April, Puthandu (Tamil Nadu) on 14 April, and Vishu (Kerala) on 15 April. Each festival marks the Sun’s entry into Mesha (Aries), yet each community follows a distinct astronomical tradition. The reason for these differing dates is explained below.

Why Mid‑April Is New Year for Many Indian Communities

Time, when left unmeasured, overwhelms human life. Early civilisations learned that time would slip beyond human control unless it was organised into cyclical, predictable patterns, such as the rhythms of the seasons, the arrival of the rains, planting, harvesting, and rituals. Calendars emerged as humanity’s way of domesticating time, making the cosmos legible, and aligning society’s agricultural, religious, and cultural life.

Across the world, three major systems evolved:

• Solar calendars — based on the Earth’s revolution around the Sun.
• Lunar calendars — based on the Moon’s phases.
• Lunisolar calendars — combining lunar months with solar corrections.

In Malaysia, the mid‑April Indian New Years such as Vaisakhi, Puthandu and Vishu, are solar. They mark the Sun’s entry into Mesha (Aries), which traditionally signals the agricultural and ritual new year.

Why the Dates Differ

All these New Year festivals—Vaisakhi, Puthandu, Vishu—are based on the same idea: the Sun entering Mesha (Aries) in mid‑April. However, the Sun's transition into Aries (Mesha Rashi) occurs at a precise mathematical moment. If this happens midday, after sunset, or at a certain time of night, different regional traditions may choose to celebrate the festival either on the current day or the following day. Because of these small differences, the New Year can fall one or two days apart. That is why in 2026. Vaisakhi is on 13 April, Puthandu on 14 April and Vishu on 15 April. Ugadi, which is the Telugu New Year, follows a luni-solar calendar. This is why it falls on a different date each year—typically in March or early April—based on the first new moon after the spring equinox.

In short, everyone is celebrating the same cosmic event, but each community measures it in its own traditional way.

A Reflection on Time and Human Community

These different dates reflect different approaches to time. Yet the passage of time itself is singular. The calendars may differ, but the human experience of hope, renewal, and beginning again is shared. As we observe these staggered New Years in Malaysia, we are reminded that we are diverse in our traditions, but united in our humanity—just as time is plural in its expression, yet singular in its flow. 

Each of us within a community or as individuals may be different, but our hopes, desires and expectations are the same.