Debashish Bose has travelled to the far corners of the Earth – to Mongolia, Libya and Zambia – to see a solar eclipse. But on Wednesday, he will watch this century's longest eclipse from much closer to his home in Calcutta. “Close to home, just 55,000 feet up,” he noted with a delighted chuckle.
Mr. Bose will board a flight with a handful of other eclipse chasers and paste his face against the window to watch the sun go dark. “I choose to see it from heaven this time,” he said with a sigh of anticipatory pleasure. “We will be deep in monsoon season in India and I thought of flying out of the clouds to see it this time.”
There are eclipse chasers – people who will travel anywhere to witness a solar eclipse – all over the world, but in India they are a different breed. They chase the darkened sun in defiance of deeply rooted religious and cultural beliefs, including a widely held conviction that the safest thing to do in an eclipse is to stay indoors, well away from windows. Mr. Bose's flight, the first in India dedicated to viewing a solar eclipse, has been organized by the Eclipse Chasers Athenaeum, one of a number of science-promotion organizations that are making the eclipse a focus of their efforts to end the superstitions and popularize science.
“Astronomy is the easiest way to explain science to common people – because they can easily see the moon and the stars,” said Sunita Mukherjee, an amateur astronomer and spokesperson for the Athenaeum. The eclipse flight is a splashy stunt for the group, but most of its work is done in schools, trying to interest kids in science through looking at the sky.
Many people in the scientific community see eclipses – which come every decade or so – as opportunities. “In India, we always take these events with great enthusiasm because it is an occasion to appeal to people for scientific rationality,” said Sabyasabhi Chatterjee, a professor with the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. “Many people have superstitions that an eclipse is harmful – that pregnant women will lose their babies, that there will be biological effects on human beings. Many people believe that these rays are poisonous, that something toxic takes place.”
Such ideas originate in the ancient texts of Hinduism, which describe dragons and serpents engulfing the sun and the moon, causing them to disappear. The texts prescribe an elaborate code of behaviour to be followed during an eclipse. At the onset, people should bathe; in the middle, they should pray and then give to charity; at its conclusion, they should bathe again, said Hari Mohan Sharma, a Delhi-based astrologer. Food cooked before the eclipse should not be consumed after it. It is an auspicious time for anyone except a menstruating woman to plunge into a wide river. Pregnant women must not stitch clothes, cut vegetables, roast anything edible or “perform any act that is physically or mentally exciting.”
For this week's eclipse, Mr. Sharma advises those who consult him not to eat, drink or have sex from the sunset before the eclipse until after its conclusion. “Because this eclipse is in the astrological sign of Cancer, it is believed that low-caste people and tribals will face a lot of hardships in following times – maybe earthquakes or tsunamis or accidents in the sea or spread of water-borne disease,” he said. “That could last for about three months – although opinions vary on this.”
