Star-Crossed

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OK, OK, we said. Logic and practicality aside, who wants to choose a date that anyone, priest or otherwise, says is destined to result in doom? Marriage is hard enough without the stars conspiring against you. So we embarked upon the quest to find a suitable date.

The Tamil panchangam used by South Indians, like my family, is a solar calendar which can vary slightly every year. The Sanskrit word panchangam means five limbs; each limb represents a different element that must be considered when attempting to find an auspicious date. These are the solar day, which is essentially the day of the week; the lunar day; the alignment of the planets and the 27 constellations of stars; the half day; and the relationship of the angle of the earth to the sun and the moon. Moreover, each day has certain hours, which are roughly the same every day, that are inauspicious. So even within an auspicious date, one must avoid certain hours.

To add more layers to the puzzle, one also has to consider the month and the engaged couple's horoscopes. Three of the twelve months of the year are deemed inauspicious for marriages every year: Markhazi (December 15-January 15), Aadi (July 16-August 17), and Puruttasi (September 17th-October 17th), so those were immediately ruled out. Our horoscopes, determined by our dates and times of birth, had to fit in as well; certain alignments of the planets aren't considered auspicious for people of certain signs.

Frustratingly, it became clear almost immediately that the complex nature of the calendar and the elements involved in settling upon a date meant that we couldn't do it ourselves; every date we considered had to be communicated to a Hindu priest, who would consult his books and calendars and let us know where the stars fell. The waiting period between our phone calls to the priest and his replies were fraught with tension. We remembered with dread an article we'd read online about Hindus postponing their weddings en masse in Toronto because priests were declaring whole six-month periods off limits and pictured our greying selves getting married years hence. Nevertheless, given that neither of us read Tamil, we had no choice but to surrender to these wizards of Vedic astrology, who can interpret the calendar with astonishing specificity, supplying on request auspicious dates for having lunch with a client, solving a business quandary, and talking to your children about their grades.

We began with the solar day: certain days of every week are inauspicious, namely Tuesdays, and, inconveniently for us and our friends from abroad, Saturdays. Tuesday, known as Mangalawara, is the day of the mischievous god Mars, while, Saturday, known as Saniwara, is the day of the god Saturn, an angry god who causes things to go wrong.

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