Moon shadow

The brighter stars and planets are visible. A small comet streaks by across the blackened sky. It8217;s just four in the afternoon8212;but it8217;s dark like it8217;s nighttime, and plants and animals react accordingly. Birds stop singing and go to roost. Daytime flower blossoms begin to close as if for the night. Bees become disoriented and stop flying. The air temperature drops. All of Nature seems still and quiet for this brief moment of daytime darkness.

This is not a fictional account of the destruction of sunlight by a maruading extra terresterial. Only what is actually possible during a total solar eclipse. On March 29 will be this year8217;s first solar eclipse. The moon8217;s shadow will pass over India at around four in the afternoon, but the eclipse cannot be seen in totality from here. The eclipse will occur because the moon comes in between the sun and the earth. The moon will obscure the disc of the sun, leaving phenomena like diamond ring and Baily8217;s Beads in its wake.

The eclipse has amazed people from time immemorial. Droll explanations have been proffered8212;folklore is replete with tales of the sun being devoured by evil beings. Astrologers draw their own conclusion on how what is simply a natural event can have unnatural consequences on the lives of earthling. Now, that perhaps is the real fiction.