✦ May 17 - June 15, 2026 • • • Adhik Jyeshtha

Once every three years,
the calendar grows a month.

The lunar year is about eleven days shorter than the solar one. Every couple of years, that gap is wide enough to add a month back. The Sanskrit name for it is Adhik Maas.

The twelve regular months each have a presiding deity. The extra one had none - until it went to Vishnu, who took it as his own and renamed it Purushottam.

With the name came a quiet promise: sincere devotion offered here weighs more than the same act in any other month.

The world’s usual business pauses inside this month. Something quieter takes its place.

● Why this year is unusual ●

Most years have twelve lunar months. This one has thirteen. Most years contain twenty-four Ekadashis. This one contains twenty-six. And the autumn festivals - Diwali, Raksha Bandhan - arrive about twenty days later than usual.

The next Adhik Maas is more than three years away.

● Four dates worth marking ●

May 27

Purushottam Ekadashi · the first fast

May 31

Purushottam Purnima · the full moon

June 11

Padmini Ekadashi · the second fast

June 15

Adhika Amavasya · the new moon, closing

✦ The day before ✦

Shani Jayanti falls on May 16.

The day before Adhik Maas opens, the calendar marks the birth of Lord Shani - Saturn, the great teacher of karma and consequence. The traditional remedy is a fire homa: a way to honour him and soften karmic weight before the inward month begins.

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● Adhik Maas Rituals ●

Five small things,
for the thirty days ahead.

Read a single page each morning.

The Gita, the Bhagavatam, or any text that has once asked something of you. If you can choose only one passage, choose the fifteenth chapter of the Gita - the one named for this very month. A single verse sat with carefully outlives a chapter rushed.

Repeat the twelve syllables.

Once around a mala, 108 times, on the way to work or before sleep. A mantra doesn’t change because you said it. You change because you keep saying it.

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya

Let something go each week.

Cook a little extra and find someone hungry. Light a lamp at someone else’s door. Hand over a bag of clothes that have been waiting all year for a reason to leave. It isn’t really about what arrives; it’s about what you can finally put down.

Eat lightly on two days.

The two Ekadashi fasts of this month - May 27 and June 11 - are the ones to keep if you keep any. Fruit, milk, water, and a little quiet. Even half a day off the usual rhythm is enough to notice that the appetite for food and the appetite for noise are often the same appetite.

Make a one-line vow on day one.

One thing you will do, or one thing you will not, for thirty days. Tell yourself out loud, or write it on a slip and tuck it into a book you trust. The promise made on the first morning is what carries you to the thirtieth.