New Year in India

When is the new year celebrated in India? Tough question to answer my friend. The answer is really “that depends”. There is a spate of new year celebrations happening in different parts of India of late. The Sikhs celebrated the new year on 14 March to mark the first day of Chet – the first month of the year. The Parsis celebrated Jamshedi Navroz on 21st March 09. The Kashmiri new year Navreh was celebrated on 25 March ’09. Two days later the the people from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka celebrated Ugadi to ring in the new year. The Maharashtrians celebrated Gudi Padhwa on 27th March this year to celebrate one year gone by. The Sindhis celebrated Cheti Chand on 28th March 09. The southern state of Tamil Nadu will ring in Varsha Pirappu on 14 April. That day also happens to be Baisakhi being celebrated in Punjab. The Bengali celebrate Poila Boishakh (first day of the first month Boishakh in the Bengali calendar) on 15 April along with the people of Assam who celebrate Rongali or Bohag Bihu to start the new year. The Hindu Year Bikrami Samvat 2065 begins on 6th April this year. The Zoroastrian New Year will begin on 19 August 2009, the Jews in India will celebrate Rosh Hashannah on 19 September 09 while Deepawali on 17 October ’09 will mark the new year for the shopkeepers in many parts of India. The Islamic year will begin on 18 December 2009 with Muharram. By then you better be gearing up to wish everyone Happy New Year on 1st January. These are the new years that I know of. I am sure there are plenty more in your part of the world. Love to know about those. And yes if you wish someone a happy new year, chances are that someone somewhere is celebrating it.

PS: My blogger friend Gautam Ghosh introduced me to wordle.net and showed me how to create this cool graphic for myself. So thanks GG. These tag clouds and word clouds are neat. Love to have them on my t-shirt. Here is one that came up when I pasted all the lyrics and chords of songs from my song diary http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/722726/My_Song_Diary

You can see a larger version of the graphic with this article at http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/722847/New_Year_in_India

You may also like:

1. 2008 – The Year of the Bookworm? The Chinese calendar has dubbed 2008 as the Year of the Rat – actually it is the Chinese Brown Earth (Soil) Rat Year. So one would imagine that Mickey Mouse (known as Topolino in Italy) would thrive. Rat trap sales will decline. I was just about going down that path when someone decided to give the lowly bookworm its pride of place in the zodiac. The Hindustan Times of 21st December 2007 did a story on the next year being [...]...
2. India on the Write Track How many books does an author have to sell before it is classified as bestseller in India? Why are Indian authors suddenly in demand? Have readers started noticing them because there is a proliferation of these authors in the bookshops in India? I believe there are many factors that have tapped into the collective potential of Indian authors - especially those who write in English. The foremost is the willingness of international publishing houses to identify local talent. What has happened is that readers who snootily ignored books that were not literary have started reading what was labeled as "commercial fiction or masala fiction". As you read this article by Sandhya Iyer, notice the happy confluence of events that lead to Indian Writing In English (IWE) growing out of its elitist bearings in the last few years to appeal to a wider mass readership, offering a variety like never before, says Sandhya Iyer in this article. ...