What it means
Lal Kitab's defining oddity is that its houses are fixed to signs: house 1 is Aries for everyone, house 2 Taurus, and so on to Pisces. The chart does not rotate with the ascendant, so a planet's Lal Kitab house follows from its sign alone — which is why these house numbers will not match a standard Vedic kundli.
How it is read
Planets are read as awake or asleep depending on the house they occupy, some houses are called blind, and empty houses carry meaning of their own. Nine grahas across twelve fixed houses means every chart has empty ones — usually three to six.
What to watch for
It is a modern tradition, published by Pandit Roop Chand Joshi between 1939 and 1952, not classical Jyotish. Its best-known half is the rin (ancestral debts) and the totke (remedies), which are also the most heavily monetised part of Indian astrology — a remedy prescribed off a table lookup, without a reading of the whole chart, is worth nothing.