Six of twelve houses make a chart Manglik, which means the dosha is present in about half of all charts from the ascendant alone. A test that fires on half the population needs its cancellations taken as seriously as its rules.

A third of all couples share a Nadi, so a rule that cancels the dosha matters enormously. The classical exceptions are specific conditions with requirements, which is exactly what makes them usable.

Two couples can both score 18 and be in entirely different situations, because the same total can be assembled from partial credit everywhere or from a perfect run plus two zeros.

The largest koota is also the crudest: three categories, nine nakshatras each, all or nothing. A third of all couples share a Nadi by pure arithmetic, and that fact does most of the explaining.

A test that half the population fails is not identifying a rare defect. Bhakoot scores seven or zero with nothing in between, and the arithmetic behind that is worth understanding before anyone panics.

Three categories produce six possible pairings, and exactly one of them scores nothing. Knowing which one turns a feared koota into a manageable piece of information.

This is the koota most people would recognise if it were described to them without the Sanskrit: whether two people actually enjoy each other's company. It is worth five points and it runs on two planets.

Twenty-seven nakshatras map onto fourteen animals, thirteen of which are held by two nakshatras each. The fourteenth is held by one, which makes one enmity in this koota rarer than its opposite number.

Six of the nine taras are favourable and three are not, and the count runs in both directions. That symmetry is what makes this the only koota where one partner can be lucky for the other without it being mutual.

Two signs in the zodiac belong to two different Vashya groups at once, split at the midpoint. Knowing which two is the difference between a correct score and a plausible one.

The smallest koota is also the only one whose test is asymmetric: it can only fail in one direction, which is why most couples collect the point without noticing it exists.

Two of the eight kootas hold fifteen of the thirty-six points and both score all or nothing, which is why so many matches fail on arithmetic rather than on anything anyone observed.