Over the moon after the longest lunar eclipse
Keep some white things out, my mother-inlaw told me on Friday, six hours before sunset, and 10 hours before the lunar eclipse. “White things? What white things?” I asked, stumped. “Rice, milk, paneer (cottage cheese), anything. Do this before the eclipse, and give it some needy people tomorrow,” she said.
I had mental pictures of flagging cabbies and, instead of saying, “Hello, Mall of the Emirates, please”, offering them a bottle of Al Rawabi and a bag of rice. I would put on my most beatific expression and beseech them to keep it and glug later; my halo would be the colour of milk, plus a dimension of glow-inthe-dark goodness.
To humour mum-in-law, I asked if vanilla ice cream would do. She replied solemnly, “Yes, whatever you have in the house”.
Warming up now, I persisted, “What about makhana? (foxnut; super healthy)”. No, she said, makhana wouldn’t do: It isn’t pure white. “So, what if it was a solar eclipse? Would I have to then keep out yellow things? Mango ice cream?”
She laughed good-naturedly, but again, reminded me to keep the white stuff out right away, and give it to someone the next day.
I assured her it would be done. Then, as soon as we disconnected the line, I got back to my episode of
Collateral (I love Carey Mulligan), and put paid to all plans of tapping on cabbie’s windows the next day.
Fascinating though, I thought. Despite having consumed Linda Goodman’s Love Signs as a teenager, and despite an old habit of enjoying guessing people’s zodiac signs soon after meeting them, I was ignorant, completely insulated from this reality of people make donations during or after a solar or lunar eclipse. It’s called I learnt. The donation you make when there is an eclipse scheduled, presumably, to ward off bad luck.
What was the point of all those years spent in North India, guffawing at maroon-robed astrologers on vernacular TV channels, rattling off the day’s horoscopes, with a gong going off after each star sign’s forecast was read out, when I hadn’t heard of the phenomenon called Had I even lived?
Later that evening, I was lucky enough to be in a house with a garden, in the company of a black Labrador, amid people who weren’t averse to a spot of moon gazing. So, we kept our glassed filled, and tracked the eclipse, its transition from penumbral to partial to full. One of the women spoke about a tempestuous but brilliant geography teacher who used Oreo biscuits to teach her class the difference between a waxing and a waning moon. When her daughter grew old enough, she planned to teach her the same way. She also said she could never forget the boot-shape of Italy because the same geography teacher had taught them this: long-legged Italy kicked little Sicily into the Mediterranean. Ah, like how I could tell apart stalagmites from stalactites only because the former has a g in it, so ground up. And the latter’s c helped me picturise that it dropped from c for ceiling.
We spoke of how these little pointers, mnemonics, rhymes go a long way to lodge these phenomena in our heads. The things you pick up and trade during a red moon, an eclipse, and Guru Purnima.
That evening, I managed to sit on the side of a sofa from where I could see the moon and observe its trajectory through the leaves of a palm tree in the lawn. I had never paid such close attention to a lunar eclipse. The only astral event that figures in my brain is from the summer of 2014, when I went out into the desert near Bab Al Shams, to observe a meteor shower, but came back bleary eyed at 4am, dejected, no meteor shower seen, only an insipid news report as proof.
On Friday, the phases of the moon were much easier to discern than the meteor shower from four years ago. Because of the clouds that night, the moon had blurred. Towards midnight, its colour drained — from a luminous shade of white to something muddier, not exactly red, but you could see how these phrases come about. Then the ‘Blood Moon’ went into hiding. You could see one bright star trailing it—Venus, someone said.
It was already Saturday, time to go home, so we called a cab, and when we got off, gave him nothing white.
On Friday, the phases of the moon were much easier to discern than the meteor shower from four years ago.