Pohela Boishakh

Pohela Boishakh is the first of Boishakh, the first day of the Bengali year, kept on two different days. Bangladesh fixed it on 14 April; West Bengal and Tripura still wait for the sun to enter Aries and begin the year the next morning, usually the 15th. On either day the heart of it is a shop: a red ledger opened before Ganesha and Lakshmi, and a box of sweets for everyone who comes in to pay what they owe.

The year is the sun's. Boishakh begins when the sun enters Mesha, the Ram, the same morning that is Baisakhi in the Punjab, Vishu in Kerala and Bohag Bihu in Assam, each with its own page in the Lore. What is Bengal's own is the count. The Bengali year 1434 begins in April 2027, and the bazaar has two stories for the number.

The first is Akbar's. His revenue was collected by the Hijri calendar, the moon's, eleven days shorter than the sun's, so that the tax day crept forward until the collector stood at the door before the harvest was in. In March 1584 the emperor proclaimed a solar year made by his astronomer Fathullah Shirazi, counted back to his accession in the Hijri year 963, and Bengal, tradition says, kept it as the Bangla san: the moon's number walking at the sun's pace. The landlord's rent day on the first of Boishakh, the Punyaha, when tenants paid and were fed sweets, became the trader's haal khata.

The second gives the year to Shashanka, king of Gauda about 594, the first ruler of a united Bengal, whose accession fits the era's first year; Nitish Sengupta and others set his name against the emperor's, and Amartya Sen holds that Akbar's calendar died with him and survives only in traces. The page's first story tells both.

Behind the ledger stands an older reason. The day before is Chaitra Sankranti, the end of the hot, dry month in which the Rarh waits for rain, and the villages close the year with the Gajan: farmers become Shiva's sannyasis, marry the god to his bride and hang from the Charak tree, asking for the rain and the next crop.

The eve belongs to Shiva and to the shops. In the villages the Gajan sannyasis, who have begged their alms through the last week of Chaitra, act out the wedding by night and swing from the Charak at dawn; the women have kept the Nil fast the day before and lit a lamp for their children. In the towns the Chaitra sale empties the shelves, and the women buy the new sari for the morning, white with a red border.

The morning begins with song. Kolkata's prabhat pheris go through the streets to Tagore before the heat, and Dhaka gathers under the banyan at Ramna, where Chhayanaut has opened the year with a raga and Esho he Boishakh since 1967, and then walks behind the Mangal Shobhajatra, the giant birds and masks the Fine Arts students have built over a month. New clothes are worn, the young touch the feet of the old, and the greeting is shubho noboborsho.

Then the ledger. The shop has been washed and hung with marigold and mango leaves. The owner carries the new red book to Kalighat or Dakshineswar, or has the priest to the shop, and opens it before Ganesha and Lakshmi: the gods' names on the first page, a coin's print in vermilion, no accounts until the second. Customers come through the day to clear the year's dues, or to pay a token so that the book begins with something in it, and are given sweets and the shop's calendar. Muslim shops in Dhaka hold a milad and write Bismillah. In the wholesale markets cheques have replaced the bags of cash, but the book is still opened.

The feast follows, shukto and fish and mutton in Kolkata, panta bhat with fried hilsa in Dhaka, and the Boishakhi melas open with their sweets, wooden ferris wheels and jatra. Chittagong's wrestlers meet at Laldighi on the twelfth of the month.