Accompany Me On My Journeys

                                                                                                On a regular day, post a swim at Mafatlal Bath Club, my friend and me would have headed back to our respective homes. But this was the day of the Lunar Eclipse, which last happened 40 years ago! Who knows how long you're going to live and why wait for another 40 years right? So we decided to head out to Nehru Planetarium at half past eleven.                                                 

The next thing we are at the staircase opposite Nehru Planetarium, where telescopes were set up for the public. We had a very kind and patient gentleman, who gave us gyaan about what an umbra and penumbra shadows are, bringing back flashes of scientific diagrams from school. Wiki link for umbra and penumbra here. About the experience of it all? There was a telescope alright, but there were also a fairly decent number of excited people. We tried to weasel our way to where the scholars had setup their equipment and we did get partially lucky with the binoculars and viewfinder of a camera, attached to a telescope, capturing images. Unfortunately, I forgot my own camera, so all you get is a picture taken from my phone.

Taken on June 16th, 2011 at 12:06 (IST) Just a blob of light in an otherwise extremely cloudy sky, taken at earlier stages of the eclipse. My dad asked me not to go, "why don't you just watch it on TV beta?". And I'm so glad, that I didn't listen to him. Sorry Dad. But it was worth the trip. We were standing under the heavily clouded sky for two hours patiently (11:30- 1:30 a.m.), gaping as the eclipse moved in from the left over the moon, while the clouds moved in from the right. Everytime the sky would clear out even partially, there were shouts and random hands pointing, "See! Do you see that? There!".   There were sudden bursts of showers during which we were offered refuge under strangers umbrellas twice, which stopped in minutes. The anticipation of the cloud cover clearing and the atmosphere buzzing with people of all ages plus TV crews from various News Channels, while people sang rain songs, cracked jokes and shared umbrellas made it all worth it. There were quite a few children, and they just kept amusing me. I overheard one telling the bunch of kids encircling him in Gujarati, while peering through a telescope, "What no moon? What eclipse? If we are not going to be able to see it, why don't they tell us. What timepass!"