Gulika Kaal today, with the working shown

Daylight length is sunset minus sunrise. Divide by eight. Count from sunrise to the weekday's index. Because the Saturday index is 1, Gulika Kaal begins at sunrise itself that day — a detail that surprises people expecting a mid-morning window.

Rahu Kaal is the period most people avoid for starting anything. Gulika — also called Mandi — additionally works as a chart point, not only as a stretch of clock time, and it carries particular weight in Kerala practice, where the horary text Prasna Marga discusses it; published summaries note that Prasna Marga and Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra do not agree on which end of Saturn's portion is taken for it. Many popular panchang sites go further and say acts done during Gulika tend to repeat, so the period is sometimes chosen deliberately for things meant to endure. We could not trace that idea to a classical text we were able to read, so this page reports it as a widely repeated popular teaching of uncertain textual origin, not as settled doctrine.

The two index tables never assign the same part on the same weekday, so on any date Gulika Kaal, Rahu Kaal and Yamaganda occupy three separate eighths of daylight. The timeline on this page shows all eight parts, with the three named ones marked, so you can see the unmarked parts that remain open.

We count Gulika as the 7th part on Sunday and then one part earlier each day to the 1st part on Saturday — the descending weekday-lord order. Every published table we checked gives this same column, and the nearest textual anchor those summaries offer is Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra chapter 3, which we have not read in the original, so we cite the practice as published rather than as a verse. No practising astrologer has reviewed this page; where traditions differ, we say so instead of picking a winner.

Gulika's remedial and chart-casting uses vary between traditions and texts; this page explains them rather than prescribes them. Windows appear only when sunrise and sunset for the date are already cached for the city; otherwise the page says the data is not available instead of estimating.

• Full Panchang for today
• Rahu Kaal explained
• Yamaganda explained
• Choghadiya and Hora muhurat