Conception Muhurat: The Garbhadhana Sanskara

Patients ask me about this in clinic and for eleven years I have had nothing to point them at. Saying I do not know is fine. Saying my grandmother used to say is not, not in that room. What I wanted was the tradition written out with its sources, and three months of windows rather than one date, because one date would have been a claim nobody is in a position to make.

My mother wanted this done and I was not going to agree to a day somebody had simply announced. Every window had its reason printed next to it, so we sat down together and picked one, which is not a sentence I have often been able to say about my mother and me.

My wife's family raised it and I said what I say to everything, which is show me where it comes from. What came back had the lines in it and the chapters they sit in. So I read them on the balcony at two in the morning between two positions, and after that I did not have an opinion left to hold.

I bought my first one of these for the shop opening, when every rupee was borrowed and a bad start was not something I could carry. When my mother in law asked about a garbhadhana date I knew exactly where to look. Same place, different page, the forbidden days listed the same way.