About Karva Chauth
Karva Chauth falls on the Chaturthi of the dark half of Kartik in the purnimanta calendar followed across north India. Married women keep a nirjala fast, taking neither food nor water from before sunrise until they see the moon. It is kept as a prayer for the husband's wellbeing and a long, happy married life, and in many homes unmarried girls and even husbands now keep it too. The name joins the karva, the small clay pot with a spout that sits at the centre of the evening puja, and chauth, the fourth day. Women who are pregnant, unwell or older often keep it with water or fruit instead, and that is fully in keeping with the day.
The day begins in the dark with sargi, a meal sent or served by the mother-in-law: fruit, sweets, dry fruit, pheni and often something for the bride's shringar. After that the fast holds through the day. Women dress in their wedding clothes or in red, apply mehendi, and in the late afternoon gather with the women of the family or the neighbourhood. Sitting in a circle with their karvas and thalis, they hear the katha, often the story of Queen Veeravati and her devotion, and pass the thalis from hand to hand while the old songs are sung.
The festival is kept most widely in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, and by families from these regions wherever they now live. Customs differ from home to home: the words of the katha, what goes into the sargi, what the karva is filled with, and whether water is taken after the evening puja.
When the moon rises, the woman looks at it through a sieve with a lamp on her thali, offers water to the moon from the karva, and then looks at her husband's face through the same sieve. He gives her the first sip of water and the first bite of food, and the fast ends. Moonrise does not come at the same moment everywhere. It is earlier in the east of the country and later in the west, which is why the moonrise times in the city table on this page differ, and each family breaks the fast when the moon is seen where they are.
The day itself is chosen by the Chaturthi tithi that is present at moonrise. If clouds hide the moon, families follow their own custom for closing the fast.
