Ahmedabad: Citizens will have to wait a day before wishing each other ‘Saal Mubarak’. The reason is ‘dhoko’ or a gap day between Diwali and New Year’s Day in the calendar following Vikram Samvat. This is the third consecutive year the phenomenon has occurred, extending the conventional five-day festival into six days.Ritesh Shastri, an astrologer and panchang maker, said that unlike many calendars, Vikram Samvat follows lunisolar cycles, taking into account the motions of the Sun and the Moon.“This year, we have also had a 10-day Navratri festival. The logic of a gap day is primarily to ensure that the New Year starts on a ‘full’ tithi or time,” he said. “This year, Kali Chaudash spilled into Diwali till 10am, and Diwali will continue till 9am on Nov 9. Thus, at sunrise, the tithi will not have changed.”While solar cycles are relatively uniform, the movement of the Moon often sends astrologers into a calculation tizzy. Shastri said that neither 2027 nor 2028 has the gap day.The Saka Samvat, India’s official calendar, follows a more straightforward approach, calculating days based on the sun’s motion (its rise), astrologers said. That avoids any grappling with an added day. The Gregorian calendar aligns its days with the help of leap days, the astrologers added.Shubham Trivedi, a professional, said that the gap day is often a dampener. “It is a recent phenomenon, and we did not experience it much while growing up,” he said. “Diwali often flows into New Year, but for the past few years, the gap day has become a fixture.”
