On 13th December, WG wakes up to "The Hindu" as she always does and saw that there were goingto be meteor showers that night...Hmmmm, her school time star watching hobby had been abandonded for years now, limiting her ability to identification of a few planets and constellations.. but shooting stars? meteor showers? She was up for this one!!
At 10.30 PM I put the little one to sleep and wondered of all the possible places I could watch it from - the terrace of course, but it is in the middle of the city...I wanted to find a less-lit place that would be ideal for starwatching...at 11 PM I took out my car and drove around a bit....As murphy's law would have it, the fuel was low and a place that would be sufficently dark and safe enough for a woman to indulge in focussed starwatching was several kms from my home plus the apprehension of being pulled over and being fined for one thing or the other, made me head back home...I thought I'll give it a shot in the terrace anyways...So I walk up five floors and the gate is locked..Okay..
The guard at our apartment must already think I'm a weirdo, driving out at 11 PM and all, so now I have to go ask him for the key and I tell him I'm going to starwatch...he's gonna be convinced I'm a looney. So WG, sorts all excuses in her mind on why would someone want to go to the terrace alone at 12PM (FYI: they keep it locked because people indulged in"disturbing" activites in the terrace in the night - whatever that was!!) - Haaa..I lost my gold chain in the terrace and I want to look for it...fair enough and he bought that excuse too .Got the keys. It was 11.39 PM now as I opened the terrace gate and looked up..
Inspite of the lighting noise from the city, the stars were quite bright. The moon was setting, half of it all oranged up - looking like a slice of fruit derived by crossing watermelon with papaya (I know, thats eeeeeeeeewwwwww)...but it was beautiful.. I located the Orion constellation and the Gemini to the north of it..and lay down on the terrace to see if anything happens..NOTHING. Ten minutes...I kept looking at the stars..
Thanks to movies like KKHH and pictures on the internet, I was looking for a positive streak of light across the night sky paying no heed to the fact that my viewing location was extremely suboptimal. Another 10 minutes and I was giving up - bhaiyya would be waiting for the keys too...Then I started hallucinating, the stars started moving...very faintly I could see new stars appear, move and disappear - Oh my god.. this was it... this was how it looked..I must have seen about 5 or 6...I would have left after one, if I was convinced that I was not imagining it...Eventually, I was convinced that it was real.
Hmmmm...so WG was happy happy happy (not everafter - she needs a lot more than meteor showers to supplement and sustain happiness). If you're wondering, I have had my dose of Hindi cinema and therefore I did wish on the "shooting stars" - greedy to one wish for every star - haha.
If you want to know more on the meteor shower, see the link below.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101213-geminids-meteor-shower-peak-december-science-space/
Bye.
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