Karwa Chauth

Overview

Karwa Chauth is a fast kept by married women in North India on Kartika Krishna Chaturthi (Ashwin Krishna Chaturthi in the amanta calendar), from sunrise to moonrise, for the long life of their husbands. It is a day of dressing as a bride, an afternoon gathering with the vrata story, and the evening wait for the moon — seen through a sieve, offered water, and only then the first sip of the day, from the husband’s hand. Its deities are Shiva and Parvati, Ganesh, and the moon; its centre is the women’s gathering.

Story

The day has no single scriptural charter; its story is the Karwa Chauth katha, told at the afternoon puja from the printed vrat books that circulate in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, UP and Rajasthan. The most-told version is Veeravati’s: the only sister of seven brothers, fainting on her first fast, tricked by her brothers into breaking it before moonrise, and her husband’s illness and recovery when she keeps it rightly the next year. A second version tells of Karwa, a woman whose husband is seized by a crocodile while bathing; she binds the crocodile with a cotton thread and demands Yama’s judgement, and Yama, fearing her, returns her husband. The katha tradition also cites Draupadi fasting for Arjuna on Krishna’s advice.

The name is the pot and the tithi: karwa, the spouted vessel the women exchange, and chauth, the fourth day.

How the day is kept

Before dawn: sargi — a meal sent by the mother-in-law (fruit, sweets, vermicelli, dry fruit) eaten before sunrise, after which nothing is eaten or, in the strict form, drunk.

Afternoon: women gather in new or wedding clothes, with mehndi on their hands, around a Gauri (Parvati) image or a drawing on the wall; the karwas are passed hand to hand seven times while the katha is read and a song is sung; the elder woman of the group tells the story.

Moonrise: the sieve, the arghya to the moon, the husband’s face, the first water from his hand, and the meal. Moonrise on this Chaturthi is late — after 8 pm in Delhi — and the wait on the roof is the day’s most-remembered part.

Jaap. Women who keep a count on the day keep Parvati’s or Shiva’s name; Ganesh is worshipped at the afternoon puja. The Parvati Chalisa is read in some gatherings.

Regional forms

• Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, western UP, Rajasthan, Himachal: the heartland of the fast, as described.
• Gujarat and Maharashtra: not traditional; the same Chaturthi is Sankashti Chaturthi for Ganesh.
• Bengal, the south: not kept; the day’s nearest equivalent in the south is the Karadaiyan Nombu of Tamil Nadu (in March) and in Bengal there is none.
• Films and cities: the fast spread well beyond its region through Hindi cinema in the 1990s; urban couples now often keep it jointly, the husband fasting too.

The date

The day Chaturthi is current at moonrise in one’s own city; the table gives New Delhi’s moonrise time with each date. Moonrise differs by city by up to half an hour, and local newspapers publish it on the day.