The end of a revolution

A couple of days ago, I asked my father when the new year falls this year.  It is always in mid-April, and I wanted to know if it was on the 13th or 14th, which is typically when it falls.

Of course, I am not referring to the new year in the western calendar, but in the Tamil calendar.

We mark the passing of time in many ways.  Birthdays are our personalized new years.  Muharram.  The academic new year.  The tax year.  Government fiscal budget year.  Alcoholic Anonymous members even make sure to tell us about the anniversary of their sobriety.  We have a gazillion "new years" in a year.  We note the completion of yet another revolution around the sun for the meanings that we seek.

During my younger years, I was interested in all things about the Soviets, and it puzzled me that the October Revolution was being celebrated in November. In the old days, there was no Google.  No internet.  And, of course, nobody to bug about this question either. As years passed, I forgot about that issue altogether.  Who cared anymore when the USSR itself became history, right? 

A few years ago, I was reading Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time.  It is not any old  novel like Tolstoy's or Turgenev's.  Secondhand Time is about the last of the Soviets, in which people refer to all things Russian, which are self-evident to Russians but not to aliens like me.  (A wonderful book to read now if one wants to know about Russia and Putin.) 

One of the people that Alexievich talks to, Margarita Pogrebitskaya, says "my favorite holiday was always November 7 ..."  And there was a footnote along with that.  That footnote both reminded me of my old question about the October Revolution in November that I had forgotten about, and answered it. "The Bolshevik uprising, which turned into the October Revolution, took place the night of October 24-25, 1917."

The rest of the footnote gets to the exciting part--those dates were "according to the Julian calendar, which is November 6-7 according to the Gregorian calendar that was subsequently adopted in the USSR." 

I suppose it is the academic in me that I read the footnotes even in the summer readings!

Russia was the penultimate country to switch from the old Julian calendar to the Gregorian.  (Greece was the final holdout.)  It happened in 1918, when February 1st became February 14th.  Just like that!

In the old country, my grandmothers' generation kept time with "Kollavarsham" because of their roots in the old Travancore Kingdom.  The curious fellow that I have always been, I recall bugging my grandmother about when the home in Sengottai was built.  She replied that the original structure had the year noted on the external wall.  I went out, and was puzzled at the number that I saw. 

When I reported it, she laughed and said it was not in the "English" calendar but in Kollavarsham. Thankfully, the year the addition was completed is noted per the "English" calendar.

A view from the terrace on grandmother's home.  1956 was when the addition was completed.
The home is only a few feet away from the temple.
This was during my trip to Sengottai in December 2005.

So, yes, a few days ago when I asked my father about the new year, he laughingly said that he doesn't track the Tamil calendar dates like he used to in the past.  "I think it is the 14th or the 15th," he said.

I heard my sister yelling something in the background.  "She says it is on the 14th," he relayed her comment.

Have yourself a wonderful new year!