Astral Projections!

Even I don't know what the title means, I found the term being used by a blogger and just decided that I had to use it somewhere! But one thing I do know is, applying the general rules of etymology, the word is connected to astrology,stars, constellations, the whole deal. Which brings me to the point of this post.

Did you happen to catch the smiley? "The what?", you may ask and maybe rightly so. Well I won't go into the technicalities of it but a few days back Mars, Venus and our Moon decided to show off a little in the sky and went ahead and formed a smiley-the two planets being the eyes and our over glamourised satellite being the lips/grin/smile. I didn't even know about it till people told me. "look at the sky!" came one message.

This message came at a time when I was returning to my cubicle after my aerobics class. For those of you who haven't been through this torture session, let me tell you, it is, well, torturous! That day in particular I remember being really, and I mean, really exhausted after the workout (quick digression for mental note: dedicate a post to aerobics classes) and here I get a message asking me to move a part of my body. Making sure it wasn't sent by my sadistic instructor, I looked up. First, up ahead. Then, to the right. To the left. Nothing. The only part left to check was overhead and behind. Since I feel a little tipsy when I am tired, I was scared that I might trip over and fall if I try to do so while walking, so I decided to sneak a peek when I change the direction of my path. And then I looked.

No, this isn't the part where I go "it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen". Yeah, it was nice, actually, it was pretty amusing. I am quite sure I stood there for a good two seconds extra, chuckling to myself, thinking how silly the sky looked. But I am the kind of person who gets amused by the weighing scale they use in the courier office, so I won't read too much into this experience. But it was better than the others:

The Meteor Shower: This topic makes my blood boil. Take a 13-14 year old girl, addiction to television, easily excitable and an overhyped phenomenon. What do you get? Major disappointment! I stayed up almost the whole night, during winter, craning my tender neck upwards towards east, west, north, south, every direction possible, hoping to catch "one of the most spectacular display of nature's fireworks" in the sky and what do I get? One shooting star, which, now that I think about it and analyse that situation, could have been a figment of my imagination or hallucination, owing to exhaustion! The next day the sheepish news reporters admit that it was more prominent and visible over certain areas of Taiwan and China. Well thank you 哑的 驴!

Solar Eclipse: Contrary to what they show in television series like Heroes, it doesn't envelope the whole sky and look like a beautiful diamond ring, straight out of Dubai's finest jewelry store! OK, it does happen, but only if you happen to live in Greenland or Alaska or the Moon! Other places, you get superstitious elders who ask you to bathe(or is it not bathe?) on that day, super excited adults dragging their kids to the local planetarium for the "once in a lifetime experience", weird glasses made of colored, transparent cellophane paper and contraptions which would make the cave man wonder if he committed a mistake by inventing the wheel. And of course the people from Doordarshan, who drone on in such a manner that it would put hardcore insomniacs to sleep! If they are to be believed, witnessing a partial (percentage ranging from 5-15, max. I think) solar eclipse is a greater achievement than Deve Gowda not sleeping in the parliament. Umm..kinda lost my train of thoughts there.

The point is, next time anyone gets all enthusiastic about any kind of event or phenomenon related to any heavnly body in the sky, I'll ask them to take a pic, maybe record a few words, take a video, and mail it to me.