Lockdown Dairies- From My Balcony

Good Evening Friends, it is 6.45pm and as I sit writing this piece, I can feel the mild evening breeze through my balcony window. The evening mast-light of the strip park in front of my house is lighted though the darkness has not yet set in. Although I see the same view from the same window everyday, I do not get bored!

Most of the birds have gone back to their nests and only a solitary crow still sits and caws somewhere on the trees. I can see a few birds still flying back to their nests for the night. The darkness deepens a bit as I sit brooding. From somewhere old melodies stream in.. the leaves keep swaying lightly with the breeze. The evening ‘shankhadhwani’ from nearby houses can be heard at intervals.

As the evening descends into full darkness, I keep a lookout for the stars everyday now, stars which had vanished from the Delhi sky and are now slowly coming back! I wait or the sky to darken so that I can enjoy the night sky with the moon and the Venus once again. Venus is still appearing higher each evening in the west after sunset.

The Moon and the Venus do keep coming very near to each other once a month and the next pairing will happen on April 26^th, 2020. As of now, the Moon and the Venus have started moving away from each other but can still be seen on the West sky together.

It is quite cloudy today after 2 days of full sun and clear skies and I am not sure whether the awesome celestial view will be visible today or not. Venus officially entered the evening sky on August 14, 2019, and will officially leave it on June 3, 2020. Till then we can enjoy the night sky views if Delhi does not pollute its skies once more!! After that the Venus will slowly enter the morning sky and will be visible around dawn in the eastern sky.

Aha, here is Venus now at 7.08 pm towards the west and the moon is almost overhead now, much farther away from Venus than yesterday. As it peeps out of the clouds I feel a sense of hope, of renewal of the Earth amidst all the chaos.

Throughout the day all sorts of news keep coming in about people breaking the epidemic law!! The chaos created by the migrant population which the authorities had not pre-empted tops the news. These people still have a reason to be on the roads, but the educated and literate population breaking the epidemic law doing morning walks and  running on the roads as if nothing is amiss is ridiculous to the core!! There there!! I am getting irritable and annoyed again!! But what to do?! It has been proven once again that India’s greatest problem is not illiteracy, but the idiocy, stupidity and greed of its literate and so called ‘Educated’ population!

May the almighty bestow his blessings on Mankind to overcome this period of hardship. May we rejoice once again in the lap of nature directly and not from our balconies as many of us are not fortunate enough to own a piece of garden on mother earth and rely on public parks and gardens! God Bless us all ! Amen ! Jai Hind!

By Dr Anindita Roy (9818541252), CR Park, New Delhi