Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika

How the windows are computed

Take the span from sunrise to sunset and divide it into eight equal parts — on a day of twelve hours' daylight each part is ninety minutes. The parts are then dealt to the agents by weekday, in an order fixed by tradition (memorised in the old English mnemonic "Mother Saw Father Wear The Turban On Saturday" for Rahu Kaal). The table below is the classical assignment — and it is exactly what Bela's engine produces; the positions here are read off the engine's own Delhi output:

A worked example from the live data — Delhi, 1 August 2026(Saturday): sunrise 5:43 AM, sunset 7:11 PM; Rahu Kaal 9:05 AM–10:46 AM, Yamaganda 2:08 PM–3:49 PM, Gulika 5:44 AM–7:25 AM IST. Note the Gulika window starting at sunrise itself — the first part of the day belongs to it on a Saturday.

Two consequences follow. First, these are not fixed clock times: the same weekday's Rahu Kaal drifts by nearly two hours across the year as sunrise moves. Second, they are local: Mumbai's windows trail Delhi's by roughly the difference in sunrise. Any table that prints one national clock time is approximating away the whole method.

Rahu Kaal — the node's portion

Rahu, the ascending lunar node, is the eclipse agent — the shadow that swallows the luminaries. Its daily portion is the best-known inauspicious window in the Indian calendar. The classical prohibition is precise: no arambha, no beginnings — do not sign, buy, travel out, start a venture, perform a marriage or griha pravesh, or open a shop in Rahu Kaal. The digests are equally precise about the exemptions: work already in progress continues; routine, meals and rest are untouched; and worship is exempt — the later digests even schedule Rahu-propitiating rites inside it.

Yamaganda — Yama's portion

Yamaganda (also Yamaghanta) belongs to Yama, the lord of death and endings. The traditional reading: works begun in Yamaganda court defeat, loss or an untimely end — so it is avoided for the same class of beginnings as Rahu Kaal, and particularly for matters of life, health and litigation. In the electional hierarchy it sits one notch below Rahu Kaal: a window that clears Rahu Kaal but falls in Yamaganda is downgraded, not always rejected — you will see exactly that as a caution (not a fail) in Bela's rule breakdowns.

Gulika — the portion that repeats

Gulika (or Mandi, Saturn's son in the puranic genealogy) carries a distinctive logic: what is begun in Gulika tends to repeat. So the digests avoid it for second marriages, re-borrowing money, taking medicine for a relapse — anything whose repetition is dreaded. The same logic makes it tolerable, even useful, for things you want repeated: some traditions lay foundations or open recurring-revenue ventures in it deliberately. That symmetry is a good reminder that these windows encode dispositions, not curses.

And Durmuhurtam

A fourth, shorter daily window appears in the digests — thedurmuhurtam, "the bad 48 minutes", one or two per day depending on the weekday. Bela's engine computes it alongside the trikalam and includes it in the screen, so a listed muhurat window is clear of all four.

Common mistakes

• Using a printed clock time for another city. The windows are sunrise-anchored; a Delhi table is wrong for Mumbai and meaningless for New York. Use thecity panchang — or the app, which recomputes for your exact location.
• Panicking about ongoing work. The prohibition is on beginnings. If the meeting started before Rahu Kaal, finish it calmly.
• Treating the window as unlucky for everything.Worship, charity and already-running work are explicitly exempt in the digests.

How Bela uses the trikalam

Every day page shows the day's Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda, Gulika and durmuhurtam computed for its city. Every date on themuhurat lists is required to clear them, and the per-rule breakdown shows the check by name — so instead of remembering the table, you can simply read whether the moment you picked passes.