On Sunday morning, thousands of homes across Australia will set up the Navratri kalash. Many will already have a muhurat. It probably came on WhatsApp from a parent in Meerut or a cousin in Rajkot, as a saffron graphic with a time printed in bold. In a Parramatta kitchen or a Point Cook living room, that time may not be entirely correct. Navratri calendar
The problem starts with the name. Sharad means autumn. In Australia, Navratri arrives in spring, with lengthening evenings and the jacarandas about to bloom. The calendar is unchanged, but the season it was written for is gone. The reverse happens in March. Chaitra Navratri and Holi, India’s spring festivals, fall in the Australian autumn, when the light thins and mornings turn cold enough to make an early bath before puja a small act of devotion in itself.
Makar Sankranti is the strangest case. In India it marks the sun’s turn northward and the start of longer days. In Australia it falls in mid-January, at the peak of summer, just after the longest days have passed. The festival celebrating the sun’s return arrives when the sun is already as high as it gets.
Most families can live with seasons arriving in the wrong order. Timings are harder. Navratri calendar
A Hindu muhurat is not a fixed clock time. Many are measured from local sunrise, so a window calculated for Delhi belongs to Delhi’s sky. Converting a forwarded IST time to Australian time doesn’t fix it, and the result can land in the middle of the night. The window has to be worked out from the sunrise over your own city.
NAVRATRI CALENDAR 2026: AUSTRALIAN TIMINGS
Pratipada tithi**
Sydney & Melbourne: 2.49 am, Sun 11 Oct to 3.00 am, Mon 12 Oct
Perth: 11.49 pm, Sat 10 Oct to 12.00 am, Mon 12 Oct
Ghatasthapana
Sunday 11 October. Pratipada runs the whole day, so set up the kalash in the morning after sunrise, at around 6 am Sydney time.
Key days in Australia
Ashtami: Monday 19 October
Navami: Tuesday 20 October
Dashami/Dusshera: Wednesday 21 October
**Timings are calculated from the tithi and local sunrise. Always confirm with a panchang set to your city or with your local temple priest.
Daylight saving makes this worse. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT moved their clocks forward on the first Sunday of October. Since then, Sydney has been five and a half hours ahead of India instead of four and a half. Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory did not change their clocks. As the box shows, Perth and Sydney enter the same lunar day three hours apart, on different days of the week.
The moon adds a third complication. A tithi begins and ends at the same instant everywhere on Earth, but a festival is generally observed on the tithi in force at local sunrise. Australia’s sunrise comes hours before India’s, and that can move a festival to a different date. This year India marks Dussehra on Tuesday 20 October, while Vijaydashami in Australia falls on Wednesday 21 October. A family video-calling home for Vijayadashami may find their relatives celebrating a day before them. Navratri calendar
None of this means the WhatsApp messages are wrong. They are correct for the place they were sent from. They are a form of love, carrying a home’s rhythm across the Indian Ocean. They just need a little adjustment on arrival. Navratri calendar
The fix is simple. Let the forwarded message tell you which festival it is. Look to the local sunrise for when to begin.
The goddess arrives in every home on Sunday, whichever sky she arrives under. In Australia, she simply arrives at a different hour.
Read more: Navratri: Nine nights, many Indias
