Buenos días a
Animal Gourmet
He closed the calendar, placed it on a shelf next to forty-nine previous editions, and blew out the lamp. The next morning, January 1, 1997, Sastry walked again to Venkatrama & Sons. The grandson handed him the new calendar: Venkatrama Telugu Calendar 1997 – cover green, Lord Venkateswara again.
“Sastry garu! The 1996 calendars arrived yesterday. I saved the first copy for you.”
Sastry paid seven rupees and walked home. Venkatrama Telugu Calendar 1996
A solar eclipse. The calendar had marked it months earlier. Sastry fasted, bathed in the Krishna River, and chanted Gayatri Mantra . The neighbors followed the same timings from their own Venkatrama calendars. The entire street moved like a single organism, guided by printed paper.
For seventy-three-year-old Narayana Sastry, the arrival of the new panchangam (almanac) was not a transaction. It was a homecoming. He closed the calendar, placed it on a
He handed over the yellow-bound book. Sastry held it like a newborn. He opened the first page: Sri Kalayuktinama Samvatsaram – 1996-97 . The panchangam calculations were done by astrologers from Tirupati and Kashi. It was said that Venkatrama’s predictions never failed.
On , Sastry sat in the same veranda. He turned to the last page. At the bottom, in small print, it read: “This panchangam is accurate for all places within 80°E to 90°E longitude. For other regions, consult local adjustments.” “Sastry garu
He had been buying the Venkatrama calendar every year since 1947, the year India became free and the year he became a schoolteacher. The calendar was thick, bound in saffron-yellow paper, with a picture of Lord Venkateswara on the cover. Inside, every page held the secrets of tithi , varam , nakshatram , yogam , and karanam . But for Sastry, it held something more: the rhythm of his life. On the morning of December 30, 1995, Sastry walked three kilometers to the bookshop. His son, Ravi, who lived in America, had said, “Why not just use a digital calendar, Nanna? I’ll buy you one.”
