Stars, Snakes and a Bunch of Bananas
Written by — CH. Aditya Krishna, Batch of 2016 Admissions
Looking out the windows, confined within the four walls of my home for nearly 6 months now, I have considered never ever planning a trip to the Zoo again. Streets and gardens in my locality where the environment used to be cheerful, filled with various activities and shenanigans by the children were now deserted due to lockdown. We, homo-sapiens have created enough trouble for nature, and it was now time for nature to heal itself and for us to review our course of actions.
Having returned from Kerala, my home was one of the firsts in the colony to have a quarantine poster stuck on the door. My father after a really long time was enjoying a much required so called ‘vacation’ from his work which I saw as a plus point. With no idea of what to do initially with my experimental project, I found myself either lying on the bed reading novels or by the television. Whenever I am home after the end of a semester, my mind refrains from using my laptop because during the entire semester, not a single day passes without my laptop and it is given a proper shutdown sequence for it to rest! But this time it was different. I had to make up my mind and create a working environment at home which I haven’t done for the last 4 years. But it is difficult when your family is around and you have to shut yourself in a room and work.
It was the nights that brought some joy to my life. Having bought a telescope near the end of vacations last semester before, the telescope arrived home after I got back to college in January. So, I hadn’t got a chance to work with it. I utilized this period to get it together and eagerly waited for the sunset everyday praying for clear skies so I could set up the telescope for my own ‘Astro Night’. I started observing the phases of the moon on a daily basis. This became a very good pass time for my family, observing the moon in turns and being mesmerized by the many features of the moon that my telescope helped make clear . But the moon was not the only thing in store, for my family to be mesmerized by.
Being a night owl it was not difficult for me to stay up one night till 4:00 am. I quickly set up the telescope out in our garden and aligned the telescope to a tiny point of light in the sky. It was now I realized that the Earth rotates quite fast as the point kept moving out view. Finally I got it on my eyepiece and focused it before I could lose it again. There it was, the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter! The bands on the planet were very clear to the view and almost three of its moons were visible. I was bedazzled by now. I quickly woke up my parents at this ungodly hour who were flummoxed. I adjusted the alignment yet again and let them have a view without telling them what they were about to see. Initially my father was not quite sure what he was looking at. After a thorough look, the expression on his face changed to something totally priceless. He said, “Is that really Jupiter I am looking at?!” He spent the next five minutes in awe, appreciating the beauty of it. My mother and sister took a look after him and were left with the same astonishment. After filling their hearts with such a view, my father started explaining the beauty of nature as he occasionally did. I used this time to align the telescope yet again to a point just following Jupiter, and had it focused. And called my parents back for another view. My father took a peek into the eyepiece and his face turned into yet another priceless expression. “Is that really Saturn!”, he said. His astonishment knew no bounds. My mother took a peek next and exclaimed with the same priceless expression, “It really has those rings around it?! Aren’t they some artist illustration? How does it hold onto them? Don’t they fall off?!”. By this time dawn was breaking in and we started the day with renewed excitement and broad smiles on our face.
Whenever I am home, I frequently find my mother warning me about the sightings of big snakes around the colony. Being an industrial region, located near the city outskirts in a forest area such sightings were common. But I had never seen them around the colony, until one evening. I was lying in my room when I heard the loud shrieks of my mother. I hastily raced through the house to the verandah where my mother was. After breathing a sigh of relief that she was fine, I asked what had happened. She along with my neighbor aunt were pointing towards a garden bush. There I saw for the first time out in the open, a 4–5 meter long snake lying in the bush. Gracefully, it lifted its head and then back down and started slithering down the bush and into the grass moving away towards a tree in the center of a small park connecting two buildings. It climbed the tree and vanished out of sight in its lush green branches. As this was an area where children play and people take their evening strolls regularly, our neighbor dialed the wildlife safety department. Past experiences suggested it would take quite a while for them to arrive. I was a bit frustrated with the pace of development of my CFD simulations, so I moved my place of work to the verandah keeping an eye on the location to warn people passing by. I ended up saving a bunch of kids that day! ‘Good job Aditya…’
My mother has a passion for gardening. Along with beautiful flowering plants, she has managed to grow quite a few vegetables and fruits that we don’t buy from the store anymore. I was lucky to be at home when our banana tree reaped its first banana stalk. Grown organically, they were one of the sweetest bananas I ever had.
This was also around the time when the Comet NEOWISE was spotted. Unfortunately, this was the monsoon season and it was raining cats and dogs day in and day out. I almost missed the view of the solar eclipse the other day due to the thick cloud cover. The comet was to be spotted near the north-western horizon but I didn’t have a good vantage point to look at the horizons. Even with the rising location of the comet each day, the seemingly stagnant clouds never gave way for the view of a lifetime.
Being in the final semester, one event I was really eager to attend was the Farewell Party. The lockdown as expected was getting extended again and again, and with it I lost the hope of the farewell party. Our juniors took up the initiative to give us an online farewell which I really appreciated, but deep down I knew it would not have felt the same as in person. But when the farewell page came out, a sense of unknown happiness flushed through me. That was one of the nicest things I had witnessed in the past few days amidst the chaos of the world. The juniors did their best with what they had, to give us a happy farewell and I am very grateful for it. The last two dance sequences from our batch and the juniors were like GOLD to me. It was very refreshing to see my fellow mates after such a long time.
This lockdown made me wonder how deeply immersed people get in the pursuit of life that they forget to give food to their souls. I hope this period could be used judiciously to inculcate certain hobbies of choice that help in recreation of our mental health during these standstill times. Have patience, take care of ourselves till things get back to normal.
