Update: You can find my new photoblog at http://www.deepakg.com/. If you follow blogs through a newsreader, you can grab the new atom feed from http://www.deepakg.com/atom.xml. See you there!

Today, the impudent moon once again tried; rather vainly, to eclipse the medium sized star largely responsible for life on Earth (and also perhaps, among other things, for triggering a long chain of interrelated events that spawned off the human species, which in turn ensured that I could write this blog post and digress). I say vainly because here in India, only about 1/6th of the Sun was eclipsed. The Sun must've felt rather apologetic for the duration of the phenomenon; for here it looked like a glowing cookie which had been bitten off by a teething toddler. The episode lasted for about 1/12th a day, and about 1/4th of the nation was in a position to witness it.

By dint of some queer cosmic design, I had the misfortune of being stranded at home. I tended to the extremely taxing chore of playing a couch potato. I usually surf the WWW, but today I surfed the tele in the hope of catching the eclipse telecast live. I had expected Discovery and National Geographic to have exclusive programming to cover the phenomenon. I was mistaken. It seems that the channels are well cognizant of the fact that bored housewives (the only ones watching the tele at noon other than couch potatoes, drowsy overfed pet dogs and insomniacs looking for a quick fix) would rather entertain themselves by viewing the immensely engaging episode of a 5 year old soap that chronicles the predicable plight of a fictitious bahu set in an Indian household that they (bored housewives et. al.) are supposed to relate to – I guess for the same reasons that you would read Nancy Drew Files instead of Encyclopedia Britannica.

The news channels decided to make up for the quasi-educational channels’ shortsighted programming omission. The entire bouquet of the 10 odd news channels that vie for your attention these days on cable, took up the subject in right earnest. As a mere celestial event the eclipse holds nothing for their target audience (bored housewives et. al.) and so most of them – the Hindi ones in particular, decided to color it heavily with astrology, mythology and the entire gamut of all that cannot be scientifically proven. They went to great lengths; like inviting astrologers that kept us thoroughly entertained with their balderdash, remedies for “ill-effects” of the eclipse (I can think of none other than retinal burns sustained as a result of staring into the sun directly) and other ignorant humbug while the moon zipped past in its orbit wondering what was all the fuss about.

Anyways, a propitious day such as one today must be put to a good use. I therefore bid adieu to this blog and will shortly start a new one at deepakg.com. The archives here will stay for as long as blogger doesn’t mind them.

And oh if I cannot blog regularly enough; blame it on the brain damage I sustained from watching the TV on a lazy afternoon.

posted: 29.3.06 | permalink | 8 comments