The Lunar Halo
Moon and its myriad mysteries
It was a cold night at Kausani, often addressed as the Switzerland of India. Though December is not the ideal time to visit this place, yet there we were. When you are bit by the travel bug and are equally obsessive about viewing a glimpse of the Himalayan peaks and enjoying some solitude, no amount of teeth chattering cold can prove to be a deterrent.
On that cold, moonlit night when mercury was supposed to dip to -3 C, a few of us brave souls had strolled out to the terrace at the back of our hotel post dinner. The air all around was quiet except for the occasional buzz of the other guests who were wrapping up their dinner. The hotel staff were scurrying about trying to finish their chores and retire for the day. The terrace, however, was quiet enough.
Faraway, a very faint outline of the Himalayan peaks was visible. The valley below twinkled merrily with the lights from the houses scattered across. I closed my eyes and dispelling all worldly thoughts deeply breathed in the icy cold air. It burned my nose yet calmed my mind. There was a sense of peace, a stillness of the soul, no restlessness, no anxiety.
While my companions were arguing about something in the far background, I paid no attention. Still in that meditative mode, I opened my eyes, and looked up to an unexpected lunar halo. Time stopped for a minute there. Had I been a witch, I would have used the pensieve. Being a muggle, I fished out the iPhone.
Let me tell you, I am not an avid photographer. In fact, I hate taking pictures. But that view was breathtaking, and I could not tear my eyes away. I looked on as the circumference of the lunar halo which was clear to begin with started to fade a little inwards and became blurry. Had the ground been grassy, I would have lain down and enjoyed the steady changes in the halo. By then, my companions too had noticed it and were busy snapping pictures. Some even googled to see what caused a lunar halo and read aloud “The ring around the Moon — or ‘lunar halo’ is caused by the refraction of moonlight from ice crystals in the upper atmosphere, creating a circular effect”. I remembered reading some time ago (purely folklore), that if you see a star inside the lunar halo, it indicates torrential rain. By then, a slight breeze had set in and as we tightly pulled our scarfs, we decided it was time to walk back. As a last view, I looked up again to see that the halo had started to disintegrate.
In all my life, this was probably the third or fourth time, I was seeing a halo. Yet, it has never stopped to amaze me that there is so much romanticism built around the moon. The brightest milky white, natural satellite of earth has captured the imagination of many artists around the world, thus rendering some of the timeless classics in the form of songs, poems and paintings. Beauty, pure and divine, is oft compared to the moon. All the Romeos of the world have believed their Juliets to possess aesthetics that surpasses the moon. Unbounded and limitless love has been described by saying, “I love you to the moon and back!” — considering that it is a whooping 384,400 km away from the earth.
Lyricists across the world have penned countless lovestruck couples wooing each other under a moon-lit sky with the twinkling stars, cool breeze and shimmering water for company. While the full moon or supermoon is largely related to life, passion, romance and love, in some lores it does bring out the macabre by being associated with Vampires, Werewolves, Lycans and Halloween. In the same horror genre, the new moon has its own fan following. Evil spirits, demons, devils in any form have been conceptualized to roam the earth during the darkest phase of the moon (Amavasya — the Sanskrit verse for no moon).
The religious world is not too far behind than the literary in its own explanations of the lunar phenomena. In the Hindu religion, people observe fast, light lamps and offer homage to their forefathers to receive blessings in order to counter the negative or evil forces on the new moon day.
This has led to the celebration of Diwali, the festival of lights, which too falls on an Amavasya. Often, the moon is referred to as “Chanda mama” (meaning uncle) and such a depiction has its roots in the Hindu mythology. Once angered by Lord Indra’s (the king of the heavens) recklessness of handling a divine garland gifted by the great sage Durvasha, he cursed the king and all other gods that they lose their powers and energy. To that effect, the gods started losing battles against the demons and thus came a time when one such mighty demon by the name of Bali conquered the entire universe. The world was in utter chaos and all the gods implored to the Lord Vishnu (the god of preservation) to deliver them from dire straits. Lord Vishnu mentioned the only way to get back their lost powers is by drinking the elixir that resided at the bottom of the milky ocean. However, the gods alone could not churn the vast ocean and hence formed an alliance with the demons by falsely promising them a share of the elixir. When the great Samudra manthan (churning of the ocean) occurred, along with other precious items, the moon came out right after the Goddess Laxmi (the goddess of wealth) and hence was considered as Her brother. Since goddess Laxmi is worshipped as a mother, her brother naturally came to referred as uncle.
Other religions in the world too have their own decipherments of the moon — In Islam, the moon guided the travelers across the deserts in Arabia where travel was largely in the night, hence the moon represents the guidance of Allah on the path through life. The crescent of the moon is one of the many common symbolisms not only in Islam but also in Christianity. This emblem is used in various paintings and representations of appearing under the Virgin Mary’s feet depicting her triumph over all that is natural and supernatural. The moon in any of its forms has been considered as a sacred symbol and glimpses of the same can be found spersed across history (all the way from B.C to A.D) and civilizations like Mesopotamia, Chinese, Babylonia, Egypt, Ottoman, Greek, Roman.
Whether literary or religious — behind every belief there is the backing of science, the proof to explain every phenomenon, every marvel. What we see, we use that as the basis to pen period pieces and often expand on it to create fictions. But every occurrence in nature is always proven by science. It is science that has explained the big bang theory on how the universe was created. Science too has supplied the giant-impact theory where a planet the size of Mars collided with Earth and the resulting debris from the impact collected around the Earth in an orbit thus creating our very own moon. Although this is the most widely accepted there are 3 other theories as well — Capture theory (the moon was a separate asteroid and got pulled by earth’s gravity), Accretion hypothesis (moon was created the same time Earth was) and Fission theory (The earth was spinning so fast that some material broke away and formed the moon).
This moon, its wanning and waxing, its rotation around the earth causing day and night, its push and pull causing ebb and tides, its gravity with earth giving us the tilt hence the 4 seasons, its apogee and perigee giving us supermoons and micromoons— so far yet so close, the only body in our solar system, in the entire universe where man has physically (not robotically) set foot on, was and still remains an enigma. The stark reality is that we have only been to chip away at a very small portion of the lunar mystery. Although in itself it is uninhabitable and has no way to support life (till now), yet its impact on making earth a livable place is monumental.
As a kid, I remember those hot summer days when we used to have a power outage and we would take our chairs or camp beds out onto the roof, terrace or to the backyard and I would lie down and look up at the moon. I was too young to grasp the broader literary, scientific or religious aspect of the moon. While we were being taught the basic science in school and I knew that there is no life on the moon, a part of me could not help but fantasize if our dear scientists did make a mistake somewhere. Imagining is priceless and I would often indulge in thinking that there were villages and huts and houses and small people, tiny in size — probably as tiny as ants that lived and roamed there and hence our scientists had been hitherto unsuccessful in detecting life. As I grew up, power outages lessened, open spaces became smaller, science was more detailed, and although the moon became more objective, there are yet times when I cannot but help wonder what our world’s greatest in the field of science, art, literature would have done if we had more than one moon. How would our sky have looked like? Probably it would have lit up our night sky more than now. All our cultures, scriptures would have been so different, lunar calendars would have varied, our environment would have been different. In contrast, if our moon were ever to vanish, the life, as we know of now, would fully cease to exist.
I have come to believe, that the moon has always been a great teacher — a guide of life lessons. When we look at the moon, despite its brilliance and beauty, the dark spots (maria or dried seas) on its surface are visible to the naked eye. It thus teaches us that not everything is the world is perfect. Being beautiful is not important, to be able to shine even through imperfections is. The moon traverses through its various phases across the month, starting from new to full moon and then back to new moon. This is an indication that the circle of life is full of ups and downs, and we should always preserve. Lastly, even with no light of its own, it brightens the entire earth thus guiding us that no matter how down we might be, we can always try and make someone else’s life worthwhile.
