eclipse, brain damage

What would one do, if a beautiful event, that doesn’s happen or comeby often times, because it is such a rare exhilerating thing – just happens to happen near one’s very doorsteps?

You would expect that people would get out of their couches and rush out, yeah? They would see and soak in the whole environment, taking in everything that the event has to offer, drink of its delicate probablities and be overcome with the immense humility that a grand celestial event would naturally warrant…

WRONG.

Actually, many folks would instead, prefer to rot in front of their idiotic TV sets blankly watching the TV coverage of the event by various ‘breaking noose’ channels, pouting statistics and breaking air through anus… Sorry.

This is what happened on 15th January, for the poor partial solar eclipse – at least in Bangalore!

Obviously, the self appointed eclipse-experts and protectors of people had managed to pursuade millions of folks who possibly were on the path of totality (and many more that were not exactly on the path, such as Bangaloreans) into relinquishing perhaps the only chance of their life to experience the beauty and awe of this stellar event! Sad.

That day was a holiday, at least in Bangalore, for Makara Sankaranthi. I had planned to visit a few folks on that day, but I was very wary of images of the impending traffic, that were forever floating up. But, lo and behold, the roads were all deserted. We were armed with a couple of x-ray sheets and every few minutes we parked our vehicle and saw the grand scene. Very peaceful and vaguely melancholic. Earlier we had watched the dramatic pin-hole camera images of the crescent sun, by merely looking at the play of light of the sun under the shadow giving trees. Fantastic.

However, the relatives who we wanted to visit, were all huddled up in front of their TV sets, while hermetically sealing their homes off from the ill and evil effects and harmful rays and what not of the poor and much misunderstood eclipsed sun. They would not answer the doorbell immediately because they were watching the eclipse so intently on TV or because they thought the evil effects of the sun will waft in through the crack in the door, if they open it carelessly, whatever! Some other relatives were busy watching films of their favourite stars or were doing rituals to ward off the evil effects (of course, without understanding even an iota of what they were mumbling and doing) – some of them were even actively twiddling their thumbs and were pacifying their growling stomachs, since they had not eaten anything from the morning!

In their bathrooms, the water heaters / geysers were switched on so that right after the eclipse, they could quickly go and take a ritual bath and eat some freshly prepared food. And, may be later they would ‘see’ some random expert talking about the eclipse, on their favourite TV channel…

Intermediated experiences are so surreal, but sometimes, they are also belly-laughteringly  hilarious!

Leave alone science and scientific temper and religious practices and rituals and what not – many of these folks don’t even understand what they are afraid of and what they should be afraid of (such as TV). Nor do they even seek to understand the principles behind the rituals – and the meditative & affirmative aspects of them. What Automatons!

But, the world is NOT ending, as the following mesmerizing photographs shot by Thekambattu folks, tell us. All is really well.

"A sequence taken in our Front Verandah during the Eclipse of 15th January 2010, where you can see that the dappled light moves from being close-to-circular to "eclipsed" back to close-to-circular"

a stunningly shot image!

All photos, some 9 of them, here: picasa web album.

Photos shared with the permission of folks from Thekambattu. Thanks!  Their blog post about the eclipse is here.

PS: Probably Pink Floyd realized it long back that eclipse is always followed (or accompanied) by brain damage. These two are incidentally, songs from their album ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon.” Now I know why many folks react they way they do, during eclipse! LOL!!

PPS: How can I let go of the opportunity! Of course erdkinder and I, had fun learning a whole lot of things about the solar eclipse, such is their lot.