Rahu Kalam is one of the eight equal parts of the daylight, assigned to Rahu, and it is traditionally avoided for beginning anything new. Which of the eight parts it occupies depends only on the weekday. Its length is one-eighth of that day's daylight — near 90 minutes in Hyderabad, but not fixed at 90.
Where it falls on each day
The assignment by weekday is fixed and is the same everywhere; what changes with your location is the clock time, because the eight parts are computed from local sunrise and sunset. Counting the parts 1 to 8 from sunrise:
- Monday — 2nd part. Saturday — 3rd. Friday — 4th.
- Wednesday — 5th. Thursday — 6th. Tuesday — 7th.
- Sunday — 8th, the last part of the daylight.
What is and is not avoided
The convention applies to beginnings: signing, purchasing, setting out on a journey, starting a new undertaking, or beginning a ceremony. It is not generally applied to continuing something already under way, and a ritual that begins before Rahu Kalam is customarily allowed to run through it.
It is also widely treated as not applying to a genuinely calculated muhurtham. Where a Purohit has selected a window from the full reckoning, that selection takes precedence — the eight-part periods are a general daily rule of thumb, and a specific calculation is the stronger instrument.
Where the general rule stops
Rahu Kalam is customary practice rather than a computed astronomical event, and it is observed with quite different degrees of strictness between families and regions. Take the day's clock times from a panchangam computed for your place; a time published for another city will be wrong.
Every timing on this page is computed for Hyderabad and Indian Standard Time. For a consequential date, confirm the window with the Purohit conducting the ceremony rather than acting on a published table.
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