Tomorrow is Aadi Amavasya. Amma kept saying yesterday that it should rain today and well, it did. Delhi got a deluge that resulted in flooding, but Gurgaon also got substantial downpour. How did Amma know about rains on Aadi Amavasya? Because she follows the Tamil calendar ! Many traditional farmers in TamilNadu still use the Tamil calendar and not the Gregorian calendar. According to Amma, it always rains on Aadi Amavasya and Thai Amavasya.
Gregorian Calendar
World over, the Gregorian calendar is in use. Its a strange thing because ancient civilisations of India and Egypt have a running calendar for thousands of years before the Gregorian calendar. Just because the British/Spanish/Dutch colonies extended to several parts of the world and the colonisers were following the Gregorian calendar, the world simply follows it today. The fact is, its difficult to follow a different calendar, because businesses world over use the Gregorian calendar.
My mother-in-law for instance would never wish Krishnan or I on our “English” birthdays or date of birth as per the Gregorian calendar. She would always wish as per the Tamil Calendar. The Tamil calendar closely resembles the Hindu calendar, used in North India. Names of the months are obviously different. We call the calendar as “Panchang” or in Tamil as “Panchangam”. The Hindu calendars offer lot of astrological and astronomical information. This is not mumbo-jumbo, but actual scientific calculations.
Out of sheer curiosity I checked Wikipedia and found the information regarding Hindu/Tamil calendars fascinating.
Here are the links – Tamil Calendar & Hindu Calendar. I took a screenshot of the Tamil months –
I remember reading somewhere that meteorological predictions in the Panchangam have been quite accurate. Astrology and Astronomy were fairly well developed in ancient India. Unfortunately Astrology today has been reduced to “predictions” of one’s future and nothing more.