Journal
Stories of fragrance & ritual
Guides and reflections on Indian incense traditions, fragrance, and everyday ritual.
Champa Shashthi 2026: Khandoba, Jejuri and the Turmeric
The last of Khandoba's six days at Jejuri turns a hill in Pune district gold. What Champa Shashthi marks, when it falls in 2026, and why a family keeps this god rather than choosing him.
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Kōdō vs Japanese Incense Sticks: Listening to Fragrance
Japan turned incense into something you can be scored on — a vocabulary, a notation, two rival schools. None of it involves a stick, which is the thing most buyers get wrong.
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Dhanurmasa and Margazhi: A Month Before First Light
Nothing new is offered in this month. The same worship is simply moved to before sunrise and repeated for thirty days, and the rest of life is told to wait.
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Guru Nanak Jayanti 2026: The Six Parts of a Gurpurab
Most of a Gurpurab happens before the day itself — a fortnight of early-morning singing, forty-eight hours of unbroken reading, and a procession the evening before.
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Brahma Temple, Pushkar: The God With Almost No Temples
Brahma comes first in every list of gods and is almost absent from the map. Pushkar is the exception, and its documented history is stranger than the legend.
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Jagaddhatri Puja: Why It Is Not a Second Durga Puja
A month after Durga Puja ends, Bengal puts up a four-armed goddess on a lion standing over an elephant. Calling it a second Durga Puja gets almost everything about it wrong.
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Chaturmas Food Rules: Four Phases, Not Four Months
Every list of the Chaturmas food rules attaches one food to one lunar month. The panchang does not agree, and the reason is worth understanding.
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Sabarimala Vratham: The 41 Days Before Anyone Leaves
Almost everything written about Sabarimala is about the last two days of it. The pilgrimage is forty-one days long, and forty of them happen in an ordinary house.
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Chopda Pujan and Labh Pancham: Gujarat's Merchant Year
The account books are consecrated on one day, the year-number changes on another, and the shop reopens on a third. Most calendars collapse all three into Diwali.
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