Today's Gowri Panchangam

Every day and night Gowri window for the coming week with its start time. Green windows are auspicious; red ones are best avoided. Times follow your selected city.

Gowri Panchangam, known in Tamil tradition as Gowri Nalla Neram (the “good time of Gowri”), is the South Indian way of reading the auspicious and inauspicious stretches of a day. It divides the daylight from sunrise to sunset into eight equal parts, and the night from sunset to the next sunrise into eight more, for sixteen windows in all. Each window carries one of eight fixed names, and each name carries a fixed quality, so a glance tells you whether the moment ahead favours your work. Five windows are good (Amirdha, Uthi, Laabam, Dhanam and Sugam) and are chosen for new beginnings, travel, purchases and ceremonies. The other three (Rogam, Soram and Visham) are bad, so people use them for routine tasks or simply wait them out.

The same eight names recur through the day and night in a weekday-dependent order. Their quality never changes; only the time each one falls does.

Gowri Panchangam is built entirely from sunrise, sunset and the weekday, so it needs no birth chart. The stretch from sunrise to sunset is split into eight equal parts for the day, and sunset to the next sunrise into eight for the night. Because day and night length change through the year, each part is rarely exactly ninety minutes; near the solstices a daytime window can run noticeably longer than a night one.

Which window falls first is set by the weekday: every day of the week has its own fixed order of the eight names for the day, and another for the night. From there the names follow that day's sequence to fill the eight slots. So a window's quality stays fixed while the clock time it lands on shifts with your city's sunrise and the day of the week.

The first day and first night Gowri window for each weekday. Every later window follows that day's fixed sequence from there.

The day Gowri runs from sunrise to sunset and the night Gowri from sunset to the next sunrise, so the exact start, end and order of the windows shift with your location's sunrise and the weekday. This page recomputes every window, along with the sun and moon times, as soon as you switch your city or step to another date.

Match the window to the task. To start something new or hold a ceremony, wait for Amirdha, the best of the eight. For work, a new job or a professional start, choose Uthi, the window of effort. For trade, a deal or a purchase, Laabam (gain) lives up to its name, and Dhanam (wealth) suits money matters and savings. For family events and journeys, Sugam (comfort) is the usual pick.

Keep Rogam, Soram and Visham for routine chores that can't wait, or simply let them pass; Soram is also avoided for travel and money, as it warns of loss. Experienced users also drop a good Gowri window if it overlaps Rahu Kaal or another inauspicious stretch of the day, and pick a benefic window with no such overlap.

Gowri Panchangam is the South Indian counterpart of Choghadiya, which is used mainly in Gujarat, Rajasthan and North India: both split the day and night into sixteen quality-rated windows read from sunrise, sunset and the weekday, but they use different names and sequences. Neither reads your birth details, so both are quick ready-reckoners and can't replace a full muhurat.

Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda Kaal and Gulika Kaal work differently. Each is a single inauspicious stretch of about ninety minutes in the day, fixed by the weekday, and a good Gowri window that overlaps one of them is best skipped. For weddings, housewarmings and other big events, a full muhurat from an astrologer goes further, since it also weighs tithi, nakshatra and the chart.