Meteor night out!

Perhaps, I am writing this out of pain. Yeah, neck pain.

Couple of weeks back I had received a mail from my friend saying – its meteor time again! And the mail announcement had this link which talks about the annual Perseid meteor showers. It said the following: The 2010 Perseid meteor shower - August's famous 'shooting stars' - will peak in this coming week, on the mornings of August 12 and 13.

After three days of my most deserved bed rest on account of controlled hyperthermia I was really tired and conveniently forgotten about the shooting stars show. After the three day long weekend, I was in office early morning on Wednesday and feeling blue, oranje, black and all the other colors in the world thinking of the pending work I had. I was almost set to getting into a state of animated mood and aversion to do any activity in office; that’s when I received one more mail reminding about the meteor showers activity is set for the day and an informal meet has been called to collectively watch the same. Without a second thought, I agreed and then some energy kicked into my day.

Some of my friends and some more who were new to me had confirmed their presence. So a bunch of us, around ten members assembled near Jayanagar at 11 pm and started moving towards Turahalli. That was our first stop. Like how meteor showers were at its peak, I guess, even our sense of humor were at its peak on this day. We had some absolutely hilarious moments and mouthful of laughs.

We were in Turahalli for about 30 minutes and were gazing at the sky like no better than how we look at our desktops. While we were able to see many stars, there were patches of clouds which gave us signal to move to a different place. Also the city lights were distracting to our eyes and hence we thought of moving to some other place where the sky is dark and less or no clouds to disturb us.  In spite of all these distractions, a genius in our team sighted his first meteor shower at Turahalli.

We took the ‘right’ turn on the Kanakapura road that connects to Kumbalgodu. After driving about 3 kms on that road, we found a place where the sky was relatively dark, free from clouds and beautiful to watch the stars. We were all looking up in the sky counting on time we say – ah! there is one!

There were some experts who were trying hard to educate a newbie like me on the subject and a chai-wala who was generous enough to prepare ginger tea at home and get it for us in a big flask. Oh! Not to forget, we had some spicy snacks and fruits to eat as well. It was almost 1.30 am and although we had not sighted too many shooting stars, it was reaching the peak and more were visible as the time went on. I was also lucky enough to sight some 9-10 shooting stars.

It was almost nearing 2 am, some of us were sleepy and none of us were even wishing for the giraffe necks the immediate day; so, we left from the place. The highlights of the activity were the following: ‘some’ amazing meteor showers, hilarious jokes, the ginger tea and of course all the team members who were fun to spend time with.

Now that I did enjoy the meteor night out, and while I will be waiting for more such events soon, er! my neck is still up somewhere and I am trying to fix it to normal!

Srik 

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