Kattakਕੱਤਕ

Kattak is the eighth month of the Nanakshahi calendar and the busiest month of the Punjabi farming year. The paddy is ripe, the harvesters are in the fields, and the grain markets fill with the year's main crop. As the days shorten and the evenings turn cool, Punjab lights its lamps: Diwali falls in Kattak, and with it Bandi Chhor Divas, the Sikh festival of liberation. Kattak follows Assu and is followed by Magghar; see the Desi Mahine page for all twelve months.

Kattak and its dates

Kattak has 30 days. In the calendar's fixed reckoning it runs from 15 October to 13 November, beginning with the Kattak sangrand. In the SGPC's published calendar for Nanakshahi 558, the month began a little later, on Saturday 17 October 2026, and runs to 15 November 2026. One date in Kattak is not fixed at all: Bandi Chhor Divas is kept with Diwali on the new-moon day of the traditional lunar month, so its Nanakshahi date shifts slightly from year to year. In 558 it falls on 23 Kattak, 8 November 2026.

The season in Punjab

Kattak is late autumn at its best. The post-monsoon air is washed clean, the views are long, and the heat is finished until spring. Days are mild and golden, nights are properly cool, and dew begins to settle on the fields before morning. It is also the month when the light changes character: the sun drops earlier every evening, lamps and hearth fires come on sooner, and the first wood smoke of the season hangs over the villages at dusk.

The farming cycle in Kattak

Everything in Kattak turns on the paddy harvest. Cutting, threshing and drying fill the short days, tractors and trolleys queue at the grain markets, and households count the year's main income. Once the grain is in, the stubble left behind must be dealt with quickly, because the window for sowing wheat is short; the smoke of burning stubble in these weeks is a familiar, and much debated, part of the season across the region. In fields cleared in time, wheat and mustard sowing begins before the month ends, and the first green of the new rabi crop shows in Kattak's last days.

Festivals and Gurpurabs in Kattak

Sikhs keep Diwali as Bandi Chhor Divas, the Day of Liberation. Tradition tells how Guru Hargobind Ji, the sixth Guru, was released from imprisonment in Gwalior Fort and refused to leave alone, securing the freedom of 52 princes held there with him. He reached Amritsar in the Diwali season, and the city lit lamps to welcome him home. Sri Harmandir Sahib still blazes with light that night, and gurdwaras and homes mark the day with rows of lamps, kirtan and fireworks. The full story is on the Bandi Chhor Divas page.

The published calendar fills the rest of Kattak too: the Parkash Gurpurab of Guru Ram Das Ji on 11 Kattak (27 October in 558); the Joti Jot of Guru Har Rai Ji and the Gurgaddi of Guru Har Krishan Ji together on 18 Kattak (3 November); the Gurgaddi of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji on 26 Kattak (11 November); and on 30 Kattak (15 November) both the Shaheedi Divas of Baba Deep Singh Ji, who fell defending Sri Darbar Sahib in 1757, and the foundation day of the SGPC, formed in 1920.

Kattak in the Barah Maha

Guru Arjan Dev Ji's Majh Barah Maha makes Kattak the month of honest deeds: ਕਤਿਕਿ ਕਰਮ ਕਮਾਵਣੇ ਦੋਸੁ ਨ ਕਾਹੂ ਜੋਗੁ ੥ (In Kattak, do good deeds; do not blame anyone else.) Forgetting the Transcendent Lord, the stanza warns, every kind of sickness takes hold, and the pleasures of maya turn bitter in an instant; but in Kattak, in the company of the holy, all anxiety vanishes. Guru Nanak Dev Ji's Tukhari Barah Maha reads the shortening days instead: lamps are lit earlier, and the lamp becomes the poem's great symbol. Only the lamp lit with the match of knowledge and fed with the oil of love burns steady, and in the month of real lamps on every doorstep, the bride feels herself drawing closer to union with her Groom.

When is Bandi Chhor Divas in 2026?

Bandi Chhor Divas is kept with Diwali on the new-moon tithi, not on a fixed Nanakshahi day. In Nanakshahi 558 it falls on 23 Kattak, Sunday 8 November 2026.

Is Guru Nanak Dev Ji's Parkash a Kattak festival?

Traditionally, yes: the Gurpurab is kept on Kattak Purnima, the full moon of the lunar month of Kattak. Scholarly research placed the Guru's actual birth in Vaisakh, in spring, and the Nanakshahi design fixes his birth date at 1 Vaisakh; but the celebration itself is still kept by the Purnima tithi, and in 2026 that full moon falls on 24 November, which the published calendar counts in Magghar.

How many days does Kattak have?

Kattak has 30 days.