Today's Choghadiya — Day and Night Choghadiya

Today's Choghadiya divides the day from sunrise to sunset into eight equal parts, and the night from sunset to the next sunrise into another eight. Each part has a ruling planet, and that planet decides whether the period counts as good, neutral or one to avoid. The table below gives the choghadiya timings worked out from today's sunrise and sunset in the city you choose. The period running right now appears in a box at the top and is highlighted in the table.

Type your city above — Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Delhi, or a city abroad such as London, New York or Dubai — and press "Show". On a phone, the "Nearest city to me" button picks the closest city for you. Your location stays on your phone; only the city name reaches us, exactly as if you had typed it. "Next day" opens tomorrow's table, which is what people searching 'choghadiya tomorrow' or 'kal ka choghadiya' want, and "Previous day" opens the day gone by. For everyone who searches 'aaj ka choghadiya' or 'choghadiya today', this page rebuilds itself every day.

What a Choghadiya is

The word joins two parts: *chau*, four, and *ghadi*, the old Indian time unit (a *ghati*) of 24 minutes. Four ghadis make about 96 minutes, which is the rough size of one Choghadiya. But that figure is only an average. In practice each day Choghadiya is one-eighth of the day's length, and each night Choghadiya is one-eighth of the night's. In winter the days are short, so the day periods shrink and the night ones stretch; in summer it is the other way round.

Here is what our own calculation shows for Delhi. Around the shortest day in December, one day Choghadiya lasts about 77 minutes and one night Choghadiya about 103. Around the longest day in June, a day period grows to about 104 minutes and a night period falls to about 76. In southern cities such as Chennai the swing is smaller, because day and night lengths change less through the year.

The Choghadiya system comes mainly from folk practice and printed almanacs rather than from a chapter of the classical muhurta texts. It is strongest among trading families of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Marwar and Malwa, who check it before opening a shop, starting a new account book, closing a deal or setting out on a journey. Big rites such as a wedding have their muhurta chosen by other rules — tithi, nakshatra, lagna and the couple's own charts — which we come to below.

The seven Choghadiyas and their ruling planets

There are seven Choghadiyas. Each belongs to a planet, and the planet's nature sets the period's nature: those of the benefics (Moon, Jupiter, Mercury) are good, Venus's is neutral, and those of the Sun, Mars and Saturn are periods in which tradition avoids starting new auspicious work.

When people say shubh choghadiya, most mean the three good ones — Amrit, Shubh and Labh. Anyone searching 'shubh choghadiya' wants to know when those three fall today, and in the table above they carry a green edge. Char is called neutral and is considered good for travel — *char* itself means "moving".

One point needs to be plain: "avoid" does not mean danger. Nothing bad happens in Udveg, Rog or Kaal. Tradition simply says that if you can choose when to begin something, begin it in a good period. Taking medicine, helping someone, reaching work on time — necessary things are never held up for a Choghadiya.

How the day Choghadiya is built

The day Choghadiya takes three steps.

1. Find your city's sunrise and sunset. They differ by city and by date — the count never starts at 6 o'clock on the clock.
2. Divide the day's length by eight. Say one day in Jaipur the sun rises at 06:24 and sets at 18:04. The day is 11 hours 40 minutes, or 700 minutes. Divided by 8, each Choghadiya is 87½ minutes.
3. Start with the weekday's own Choghadiya and move through the fixed order.

The first day Choghadiya belongs to the lord of the weekday: Udveg (Sun) on Sunday, Amrit (Moon) on Monday, Rog (Mars) on Tuesday, Labh (Mercury) on Wednesday, Shubh (Jupiter) on Thursday, Char (Venus) on Friday and Kaal (Saturn) on Saturday. After that the order never changes:

Udveg → Char → Labh → Amrit → Kaal → Shubh → Rog → back to Udveg

The eighth period is the same as the first, because the sequence of seven wraps around. So the day Choghadiyas for the seven weekdays are:

How the night Choghadiya is built

The night Choghadiya splits the time from sunset to the next morning's sunrise into eight equal parts. There is a detail here that many tables skip: to know the night's length you need the next day's sunrise, in the same city. Our table uses it, so the last night period ends exactly at the next sunrise.

The night order is different from the day order:

Shubh → Amrit → Char → Rog → Kaal → Labh → Udveg → back to Shubh

And the first night period depends on the weekday:

People who look up 'rat ka choghadiya' usually want the time for a late journey, a wedding procession that leaves at night, or a puja after dark. That is the second half of the table above.

Vaar Vela, Kaal Vela and Kaal Ratri

Many almanacs — Gujarati ones especially — add three more markers to the Choghadiya. Our table shows them as small tags:

• Kaal Vela — every day Choghadiya named Kaal. On Saturday it is both the first and the eighth period of the day.
• Kaal Ratri — every night Choghadiya named Labh. By name Labh sounds good, but tradition treats this night period as Kaal Ratri and avoids new auspicious starts in it.
• Vaar Vela — a fixed slot of the day: the fourth on Sunday, the seventh on Monday, the second on Tuesday, the fifth on Wednesday, the eighth on Thursday, the third on Friday and the sixth on Saturday.

One effect of this is worth knowing. On Friday the third day period is Amrit, but it is also Vaar Vela; on Sunday the fourth period, Amrit again, falls in Vaar Vela too. Many families skip that Amrit and take the next good period. This is a matter of custom — no necessary work needs to wait for it.

Which Choghadiya is running now — and the rule before sunrise

In Indian astrology the weekday changes at sunrise, not at midnight. So after midnight, until sunrise, the previous weekday's night Choghadiya is still running. At 4 a.m. on a Saturday, for example, the period you are in belongs to Friday night, not to Saturday.

This is the most common slip: the date on the clock turns over and people read the next day's table. Ours takes care of it. Open the page before sunrise and it shows the previous day's full table, with the running night period highlighted. As soon as the sun rises, the "Running now" box moves to the new day; if the page has been left open, it refreshes itself once.

The "Running now" box is matched against the real moment in time, not your clock's time zone. So even if you sit abroad and look at an Indian city's Choghadiya, it highlights the right period — as long as your device's clock is correct. The same holds the other way: a family in India can check the Choghadiya of a son or daughter living in London or Toronto, and see it in that city's local time.

Why it must be your own city

The whole of India runs on one clock, Indian Standard Time, but the sun rises at a different time in every city. Here is our calculation for one day in mid-October:

Sunrise in Guwahati and Jodhpur is a full hour and a quarter apart. Read Kolkata's table while sitting in Jodhpur and even the first morning period is off by about an hour. So whenever you check 'today choghadiya', choose your own city. If you live in a village or small town, choose the nearest city — 20 to 30 kilometres usually moves sunrise by only a minute or two.

Why almanacs differ by a minute or two

Compare two almanacs and you may sometimes see a minute or two of difference at the edges. The main reason is the definition of sunrise. Our calculation takes sunrise as the moment the sun's upper edge appears on the horizon, with the standard allowance for the bending of light in the air (refraction) — the definition astronomical observatories use, because that is when the eye first sees the sun. Some almanacs use the centre of the sun's disc instead; the sun takes about a minute to rise by half its own width, so they differ by about that much. The old siddhantic method takes the centre without refraction, which makes a difference of about four minutes. That difference in sunrise carries to every Choghadiya boundary. A smaller cause is which point of the city is used. One difference comes from our own caution: where a good or neutral period meets an inauspicious one, we round the boundary to the whole minute on the inauspicious side, so a time shown as good never touches an inauspicious moment. Some boundaries therefore differ from other almanacs by a minute — always on the side of caution.

The practical rule follows: do not plan anything for the first or last minute or two of a period. Choose the middle. A Choghadiya is around an hour and a half long, so this is easy.

Choghadiya, Rahu Kaal and muhurta — what each is for

These three are different things, and they often get mixed up.

• Choghadiya is for everyday, short tasks — opening a shop, making a deal, leaving on a trip, buying something. It comes only from sunrise, sunset and the weekday.
• Rahu Kaal is a separate part of the day, with a stronger tradition in South India. Sometimes it falls inside a good Choghadiya; many families then skip that stretch too. Our panchang page gives today's Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal.
• Muhurta is for major rites — a wedding, entering a new home, the first haircut, naming a child. It looks at tithi, nakshatra, yoga, lagna and the chart of the person concerned. A wedding date is never fixed by Choghadiya alone, even though some people loosely call the table "choghadiya muhurat".

If you are using tomorrow's table to plan a journey or a purchase, that is exactly what it is for. For a wedding or a griha pravesh, have a full muhurta worked out.

Common mistakes

1. Reading another city's table. As the table above shows, cities can differ by more than an hour.
2. Counting 90-minute blocks from 6 a.m. Sunrise is never fixed at 6, and the length of a Choghadiya changes every day.
3. Switching to the new day at midnight. The previous weekday's night runs until sunrise.
4. Holding up every small task. Choghadiya is a convenience, not a rule you must obey. Begin what you can move in a good period; do everything else on time.
5. Fixing a big rite by Choghadiya. Marriage decisions rest on both charts, not on a strip of time.

Choghadiya and marriage — why both charts are a separate matter

Choghadiya tells you which hour and a half of today is considered good for which kind of work. It is the same for everyone — every person in a city shares today's Choghadiya. Marriage, harmony in the family and peace at home, though, belong to each person's own chart. How well two people's temperaments match, whether there is Manglik or Nadi dosha, which dasha is running in each life right now — no public table can tell you that.

That is why the Kundli Milan Jyotish team keeps Choghadiya and panchang for daily tasks, and has built separate kundli matchings for relationships. When a match is being discussed, the Vivah Kundli Milan uses both birth dates, times and places to show the 36 gunas, Manglik, Nadi and Bhakoot with their classical exceptions, both full charts, and the marriage period. When there is friction at home, the Griha Shanti Milan reads the charts of any two family members together and gives remedies. The report never advises ending a relationship — where something needs care, it gives a remedy.

Frequently asked questions