Delhi Panchang, 21 May 2026

The five windows in Delhi on 21 May 2026

In clock order through the day. Which numbered eighth of daylight Rahu Kaal, Gulika and Yamaghanta each take is fixed by the weekday rather than by the clock, and no two weekdays share the assignment: on a Thursday Rahu Kaal is the 6th of the eight, Gulika the 3rd and Yamaghanta the 1st. Sunrise 05:27 to sunset 19:08 is 13h 41m, so an eighth of it runs 102.6 minutes and a fifteenth — which is what Abhijit is — runs 55 minutes. The Length column is the gap between two endpoints each rounded to the whole minute, which is why the three eighths below read 103 minutes apiece.

The convention the classical almanacs record is that nothing new is begun inside Rahu Kaal, Gulika or Yamaghanta, and that Abhijit and Brahma muhurat are the day’s two settled windows — Brahma muhurat being the ninety-six minutes ending at sunrise, which is why it is the one window here whose length never changes with the season. What the tradition does not do is grade the rest of the day, and neither does this page. Choosing a window for a purpose needs a chart as well as a clock.

Why these times are the tabulated ones

Delhi is the place this site’s national panchang is computed for, so the times above are the tabulated DE421 values themselves rather than a second calculation of them, and they agree to the minute with /panchang/2026-05-21/ because they are the same numbers. Every other city in this cluster is computed from its own latitude and longitude and compared against these — which is worth knowing in the other direction too: a table published for Delhi is the one almost every panchang in the vertical reprints, and it is wrong by the better part of an hour at the two ends of the country. What this page adds to the national one, then, is not a different set of times but a different set of questions about them: where 21 May 2026 sits in Delhi’s own year, how far it moved from yesterday, and how the seven windows compare across the cluster. Those are below.

An eighth of the day is not ninety minutes

Rahu Kaal, Gulika and Yamaghanta are each one eighth of the interval from sunrise to sunset. That is a definition, not an approximation, and it means the length of each is a property of the day rather than a fixed quantity anyone can print once. A table quoting a flat ninety minutes is therefore wrong here today by 13 minutes, and wrong in the short direction — it closes the window early. Across 2026 in Delhi an eighth runs from 77 minutes to 105 minutes, so the error is not a constant either. Abhijit is a fifteenth of the same interval rather than an eighth, so it runs 55 minutes today — a little over half of Rahu Kaal, and it moves with local solar noon rather than with the clock. Brahma muhurat is the exception: fixed at 96 minutes because it is defined as a span before sunrise rather than a fraction of daylight, so in Delhi it shifts with sunrise and never changes length.

Where 21 May sits in Delhi’s year

13h 41m of daylight is the 63rd longest of Delhi’s 365 days in 2026. The year’s longest sits 17 minutes above it, on 14 June and 9 other days at the same length; its shortest 202 minutes below, on 17 December and 4 other days at the same length. Since yesterday sunrise has moved not at all, sunset 1 minute later, so the day is 1 minute longer — and every window above has moved with it. A monthly table hides that; a dated page is where it shows.

Of the eight cities in this cluster, Delhi is the 2nd to see the sun on 21 May 2026. Sunrise across the eight spans 68 minutes, from 04:54 in Kolkata to 06:02 in Mumbai — and Rahu Kaal’s opening spans 63 minutes, which is the more useful of the two numbers and the one no national table can carry.

The five limbs on 21 May 2026

These five are the same everywhere in India, and they are listed here for completeness rather than because they vary by city — a tithi is an angular relationship between the Sun and the Moon, and an angle does not have a postal address. One caveat is honest and worth stating: the almanac convention is to read each limb at sunrise, and the tabulated values above are read at this city's own sunrise. Since this is the place the table is computed for, there is no gap to allow for here. Every other city in the cluster reads these five at a sunrise a few minutes away from this one, and the national page for 21 May 2026 shows the neighbouring days for that reason.

21 May 2026 in eight cities

East to west, in the order the sun reaches them. The last column is measured from Delhi, so this table is a different table on each of the eight pages that share this date.

The two columns do not run in the same order, and 21 May 2026 is one of the dates where that is visible: Delhi sees the sun before Chennai and still reaches Rahu Kaal 19 minutes after it. The reason is in the fourth column. Both cities take the same numbered eighth on a Thursday, but Chennai’s eighth is 96 minutes against 103 in Delhi, and several eighths of that difference accumulate before the window opens. A shorter day reaches its own afternoon sooner.

Questions about Delhi on 21 May 2026