Eclipse of the Sun and other things

Naheed Maalik
Aug 22, 2017 · 3 min read

So today was a solar eclipse that was a landmark one in many ways. According to NASA, this was a rare “celestial coincidence,” as the sun is about 400 times wider than the moon and about 400 times farther away. Today, from certain vantage points on Earth, the moon completely blocked the sun, hence the title: total solar eclipse.

Also, according to NASA, experiencing a total solar eclipse where you live happens about once in 375 years. This triggered the now a common global condition: FOMO in me, I feared missing out this, considering I’ve probably lived half my life and since I haven’t ever witnessed a solar eclipse before, likelihood is I won’t in the remaining years.

Off I headed to the nearest park, where I thought I could relax in the sunshine on a lovely, warm day, apparently also a precious occurrence in my new ‘maybe-hometown’. Coming from 365 days glaringly sunny days, some of them hot enough to do a successful frying egg on top of a car experiment, I am still coming to terms with the love of a clear, warm bright day. It reminds me of an English colleague who expressed his amazement at the South Asian colleagues’ delight at a constant, fine drizzle, which he described as ‘miserable’.

According to an expert, this total eclipse was also supposed to elicit an emotional reaction in those who witnessed it. In his words: ‘The hair on the back of your neck is going to stand up, and you are going to feel different things as the eclipse reaches totality. It’s been described as peaceful, spiritual, exhilarating, shocking.’

On the walk to the park, using my phone GPS (my natural sense of direction being close to non-existent), I started setting landmarks, to challenge myself to walk back without the GPS. In addition to the bank at the corner and a pizza shop with the big yellow hoarding, I noticed a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk. Now, seeing homeless people anywhere is disturbing but more so in a developed country. ‘Food, clothing, shelter’, remained the slogan of myriad political parties in developing countries for years on end, but you’d think that these human needs would be met in the first world. Anyway, the slumbering man became another landmark for me.

The eclipse itself was pretty amazing though things didn’t go as dark as promised and there were no hair raising on my neck or spiritual feeings in my heart or head or wherever they were supposed to happen. I didn’t do a Donald Trump and risk losing my eyes, but not having the special glasses, I found a clever way of viewing and photographing eclipse on my phone camera, set on selfie mode (see pictures) Necessity really is the mother of invention.

Having ensured that it was not going to get any more eclipsed than it was, I started the trek back home, sans the GPS and all my landmarks, including the still slumbering man helping me on.

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Naheed Maalik

Written by

An ideas person. Also a words person when I get those on paper. Intelligent conversations are my turn on. Communicator and marketer by profession.

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