Gulika Kalam

What gulika kalam is, and how it is calculated

Gulika kalam — also called gulika or mandi — is the eighth of the day attributed to Gulika, described in the tradition as a son of Saturn. Of the three weekday eighths it is the one treated with the least severity, and in some regional practice it is regarded as favourable rather than adverse: acts intended to endure or repeat, such as certain forms of charity, are deliberately placed inside it.

The daylight period — sunrise to sunset — is divided into eight equal parts, and one of them is assigned to this window by the day of the week. Because the parts are fractions of daylight rather than fixed clock hours, each one stretches in summer and contracts in winter, and each falls at a different clock time in every city. A window that runs 90 minutes in June may run 75 in December, and Hyderabad's will not be Delhi's.

Its assignment is the simplest of the three to remember, because it runs straight backwards through the week: Sunday takes the seventh part, Monday the sixth, Tuesday the fifth, Wednesday the fourth, Thursday the third, Friday the second and Saturday the first. Each day the window opens one eighth earlier than the day before.

Because the readings of gulika differ — inauspicious in one household's practice, deliberately auspicious in another's — this site prints the window and leaves the interpretation to the reader and their family tradition. That is the general policy here: the timing is a computation and we publish it; what it means for a given family is not ours to assert.

As with the other eighths, the window is derived from the daylight period of the selected city, so it moves through the year and differs from place to place.

Counted from sunrise. Gulika walks one eighth earlier each day of the week, ending at the first part on Saturday.