India, Sept. 21 -- The dividing line between ancient wisdom and avoidable superstition and prejudice depends on how much you know about your own culture and heritage. Very often, for the Anglicised upper crust, anything belonging to the past is reflexively dismissed as hocus-pocus-a hindrance to modernity defined only through a Western paradigm.

One example of this is how little this class, in the thrall of the Gregorian calendar, knows about the Indian calendar, the Panchang, which is not merely a way to measure time, but also a system that harmonises nature, culture, and our ecological imperatives.

Unlike the Western bifurcation of the year into four seasons, the Indian calendar traditionally divides the year into six distinct seasons...