Good hours, North and West India

The day split into eight equal parts and the night into eight more, each named Amrit, Shubh, Labh, Char, Rog, Kaal or Udveg. Amrit, Shubh and Labh are the good ones, Char is neutral, and the other three are left alone. The weekday sets which name falls first, and the rest follow in a fixed order.

A daylight part is one eighth of the time between sunrise and sunset, and a night part one eighth of sunset to the next sunrise. That is about 90 minutes each near the equinoxes, but the day parts stretch in summer and shrink in winter, so they are rarely exactly an hour and a half.

The everyday decisions: when to set out, sign something, open a shop or begin a small job. It is the quick check of North and West India. A wedding or a house-warming is not chosen this way — those need the month, tithi, star and lagna together.

Almost always the place. Every part is measured from your own sunrise and sunset, so a city half an hour to the east shifts every boundary. A few apps also divide from a fixed 6 AM to 6 PM instead of true sunrise, which moves the parts by more.

No. It is the everyday table of the North and West — the Hindi belt, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu reads the Gowri Panchangam instead, and Telugu and Kannada almanacs use neither: they check Varjyam, Durmuhurtham and Gulika Kaala. Nothing is missing from an almanac that does not print a Choghadiya; the region simply answers the question another way.

They are the same idea in two traditions, and they disagree. Both cut daylight into eight equal parts and the night into eight more, from your own sunrise and sunset, with the weekday setting the order. But the Choghadiya, read in the North and West, walks the planetary order from the weekday's lord and marks three of its seven names good; the Gowri Panchangam, read in Tamil Nadu, uses a fixed table of eight names, five of them good. The same stretch of an afternoon can be good in one and best avoided in the other, so follow the one your family follows rather than looking for agreement.

It happens often, because the two are counted differently — Rahu Kaal is one eighth of daylight by weekday, the Choghadiya is its own cycle. Most people treat Rahu Kaal as the stronger caution and pick another good part; the page shows both so you can see the overlap rather than discover it later.