Karva Chauthਕਰਵਾ ਚੌਥ

Karva Chauth is the most demanding of the year's household fasts: a married woman eats before dawn, then takes neither food nor water until she has seen the moon, often ten or more hours later. The fast is kept for her husband's safety and long life, and the day around it, with its pre-dawn meal, its new clothes and its circle of women at dusk, has become one of the most distinctive festivals of the north Indian autumn, and of Punjab in particular.

What is Karva Chauth?

The festival is also called Karaka Chaturthi. It falls on the fourth day (chaturthi) of the waning half of the lunar month, Kartika in the purnimanta calendar used in the north, which corresponds to Ashvin in the amanta calendar, placing it in October or November. Its name joins karva, the small earthen pot that stands at the centre of the evening worship, and chauth, fourth. Traditionally the fast is a married woman's vow for her husband; in some places unmarried women keep it too, for a future husband or a chosen one. The karva at the centre of the worship is not decoration: filled with water, it is the vessel of the evening puja, carried in the thali circle and used when water is offered to the risen moon. The festival's strongest ground is the northwest, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh, with kindred observances further south, such as Atla Tadde in Andhra Pradesh, kept on a nearby date on the same principle of a fast for a husband's welfare.

Sargi: the meal before dawn

In Punjab the day begins in the dark, with sargi, the pre-dawn meal eaten before sunrise. The sargi thali is traditionally prepared or given by the mother-in-law and carries fenia, fine vermicelli served with milk, along with fruit, sweets, parathas and dry fruits, food chosen to carry a woman through a long day without water. The gift of sargi is itself a bond: a blessing passed from the older woman of the house to the younger, along with new clothes, bangles and henna for the evening.

The day and the evening story circle

Through the day the fasting women rest from heavy work and gather in the afternoon or evening for the puja. Dressed in bridal reds and maroons, many in their wedding finery, they sit in a circle with their thalis, each holding the karva of water, a lamp and sweets, and as the Karva Chauth story is told the thalis are passed around the circle from woman to woman, the feri ritual that Punjab keeps with particular care. The best-known of the stories told is of Queen Veeravati, whose first fast was broken by a trick before moonrise, whose husband fell gravely ill in consequence, and who kept the fast with full rigour the next year and won his life back: a warning, the tale says, to keep the fast exactly.

Moonrise: the sieve and the first water

The fast ends at moonrise. The women go up to rooftops and courtyards with their thalis and a sieve, the chalni. Each looks first at the moon through the sieve, offers water to it, and then looks through the same sieve at her husband's face. Her husband then gives her the first sip of water, and often the first morsel of food, of the day. Families then eat together, and in recent decades husbands, in Punjab and elsewhere, have increasingly begun keeping the fast alongside their wives.

Karva Chauth in Punjab

Few regions keep Karva Chauth as fully as Punjab, where it stands alongside Teej and Rakhi in the year of married women. The state's markets sell out of karvas, sieves, fenia and red dupattas in the days before; mehndi artists work in rows in every bazaar; and the sargi and feri customs described above are specifically the Punjabi form of the festival. The day is also an assertion of the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law bond, since the whole fast is framed in Punjab by the elder woman's gift at dawn. It falls in the same bright season as Navratri, Dussehra and Diwali, within weeks of them.

When is Karva Chauth?

Karva Chauth falls on Krishna Paksha Chaturthi, the fourth day of the dark half of the month, Kartika by northern reckoning, roughly a fortnight after Dussehra and about eleven days before Diwali. Because it follows the moon, its Gregorian date shifts each year within October and November.