Good hours, Tamil Nadu

The good stretches of the day in the Tamil reckoning. Daylight and night are each cut into eight parts named Amirdha, Uthi, Laabam, Sugam, Dhanam, Rogam, Soram and Visham; the first five are the good ones — the Nalla Neram — and the other three are set aside. The weekday decides which name the day opens with.

Not quite. A printed daily sheet usually carries its publisher's own short Nalla Neram row, nearly the same times every day. Here the parts are the Gowri Panchangam itself, measured from your own sunrise and sunset, so they move with the season and with your town.

Everyday beginnings — setting out on a journey, starting work, handing over money, or a small ceremony at home. For a wedding or a house-warming the family's priest weighs the month, tithi, star and lagna as well.

No — it is Tamil. Tamil Nadu keeps it, as do Tamil families in Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia, but Telugu and Kannada almanacs do not print it at all: they read Varjyam, Durmuhurtham and Gulika Kaala for the same purpose, and Kerala keeps its own reckoning. So this is the page for a Tamil household, not a South Indian one in general.

They answer the same question in two traditions. Both divide daylight and night into eight equal parts from the local sunrise and sunset, with the weekday setting the order. The Gowri Panchangam uses eight Tamil names, five of them good, from a fixed table; the Choghadiya of the North and West uses seven names, three of them good, walking the planetary order from the weekday's lord. Because the two are built differently, a part that is good here can be one to avoid there — they are not two views of one answer.

Because the eight parts are measured from the sunrise and sunset of the place you have set. Coimbatore's sunrise is later than Chennai's by several minutes, and a city abroad by hours, so every boundary moves with it.