Oh, my dear, we do. Every new moon is a fresh start – we light a single candle for each daughter who’s yet to marry, and we gather around the old banyan tree to whisper our hopes. Full moon nights are for the “Sati” ritual, where we bathe the elders and dance in the moonlit courtyard, believing the glow keeps the household healthy. The waxing phases are for sowing; the waning ones for harvesting. If you’d like, I can share the secret of the “Rakhi” that’s tied to the moon’s crescent – it’s as old as my great-grandmother’s shawl!

In our village we keep a simple log: we plant the first seed of the season in the waxing moon, right after the new moon, and we harvest when the moon is waning. Over the last five years we noted that fields sown on the first ten days of the waxing phase yielded about fifteen percent more grain than those sown after the full moon, when the sky is darker and the soil stays cooler. Farmers here agree with the modern model that light intensity and temperature during the early growth stage matter, but we call it the “moon’s blessing” rather than a science. The Rakhi ceremony is a bit more ritual than calendar. It is traditionally held on the twelfth day of the waxing crescent, when the moon is still bright but not yet full. The timing is precise enough that we mark it on the village almanac, but the exact moment is more symbolic – we light a small lamp and say that the day the moon is half‑full represents the balance of family ties. So yes, it follows a specific lunar phase, but the meaning is more about the balance it represents than the exact light level.