Gudi Padwa - the Marathi and Konkani new year, marked with a gudi flag, neem leaves and the bitter-and-sweet first meal of the year

Gudi Padwa is the Marathi and Konkani new year. On the first day of the bright half of Chaitra, every household raises a decorated bamboo flag, eats a bitter-and-sweet dish to start the year, and welcomes spring and the harvest it promises.

The one-line summary

Marathi and Konkani Hindu new year, on Chaitra Pratipada in late March or early April. Cultural category. A public holiday in Maharashtra and Goa rather than nationwide. The gudi flag - silk cloth, neem and mango leaves and an upturned kalash on a bamboo pole - is raised at every home, and the day begins with neem and jaggery, sour tamarind and coriander, eaten as a reminder that a year contains both.

When it falls

Gudi Padwa is a lunisolar festival, so it has no fixed Gregorian date. It falls on Chaitra Shukla Pratipada - the first day of the bright fortnight of Chaitra, the first month of the Hindu calendar - and therefore walks across the window from about 19 March to 19 April depending on where the moon falls. The coming years are 7 April 2027, 27 March 2028, 14 April 2029 and 3 April 2030. Note the spread: two of those four are in March and two in April, which is exactly why a Gregorian date is never a safe answer for this festival.

The gudi

The gudi is the festival. A bamboo pole is set up in front of the house and dressed in layers: a bright silk scarf-like cloth at the top, boughs of neem and mango leaves, a garland of flowers, and at the very top an inverted silver, bronze or copper pot - the kalash, a vessel whose right-way-up-inverted form signifies victory or achievement. On some temple hills the poles are so tall that it takes a group working together to raise one, and that collective lift is one of the more memorable images of the morning.

There is more than one explanation for what the gudi stands for. Some read it as the flag of King Shalivahana, hoisted by his people when he returned to Paithan. Some read it as the banner of Brahma in the Brahma Purana, or as Indra's banner. And there is a domestic and protective reading that needs no myth at all: the gudi is believed to ward off evil and to invite prosperity into the house. That practical, warding-off meaning is the one most households would give if asked why the pole is there.

The first meal

The day opens with a dish that is deliberately not pleasant. Neem leaves, bitter, are mixed with jaggery, sweet, and often with sour tamarind and astringent coriander seed. It is eaten at the start of the year, and it is meant to be tasted as a whole - the bitter and the sweet together - as a reminder that a year will contain both. It is also a genuinely old piece of household health knowledge, since neem has been used medicinally in South Asia for a long time. The Konkani version is called pacchadi, and the identical South Indian dish at Ugadi is eaten on the same day.

Many new years

Gudi Padwa is not "the" Hindu new year; it is one of several, and which one a family keeps is a question of region and community. The same date, Chaitra Pratipada, is Ugadi or Yugadi in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Cheti Chand among Sindhis, Navreh among Kashmiri Pandits, and Samvatsar Padvo among Konkani Hindus. In Gujarat and nearby, the new year is instead Diwali, the festival of lights. And for a great many people across the subcontinent the popular new year is Vaisakhi in mid-April, which Hindus and Buddhists across South and Southeast Asia mark together. Four new years in one subcontinent, all legitimate, all in the same season.

Related holidays

Chaitra Pratipada is also the first day of Chaitra Navratri, the nine nights of the goddess Durga that open the festival season leading to Dussehra, so Gudi Padwa is frequently the same day as the start of the Durga worship that Durga Puja belongs to. In the weeks after it comes Holi, the other great spring festival of the colour season, and further out the mid-April new year of Vaisakhi.

Sources

• Wikipedia - Gudi Padwa (the gudi construction and its meanings; the neem and jaggery dish and its significance; the range of regional names for Chaitra Pratipada; the position of the new year among India's several new years).
• Wikipedia - Hindu calendar (the lunisolar calendar and the Chaitra month, as referenced for the date rule).