Eclipse

Yesterday was a solar eclipse (around 6pm in Chennai time). Too bad that I missed it, but the interesting thing happened after I came back home from the office. Arvind and I went to his grandparents’ place just to show our face to them but when we went there, his grandmother kept asking whether we’ve had shower or not. Of course, we haven’t taken shower because we immediately left home after I cam back from office. She kept asking why not?, why we haven’t taken shower? etc… That was when I was told that eclipse is a very auspicious event and very religious people will take shower both before and after the eclipse. They will also have to finish their food 6 hrs before the eclipse so that their stomach will be completely empty when the eclipse happens. Also men who lost their parents (i.e. whose parents are deceased) should do a special prayer during that time. Certain stars (i.e. people with certain horoscopes) will be affected negatively by this eclipse, so usually a priest does a small prayer to get rid of the evil that may affect these people. I saw a priest leaving Arvind’s aunt/uncle’s place yesterday and I later found out that the priest was doing a prayer for their grandchildren who have this horoscope. According to amma, these days, people don’t follow these things that strictly but they do follow things like not eating before the eclipse (4 hrs before instead of 6 hrs before) and doing prayers for those people who have a horoscope that may be affected, etc. Arvind wanted to drink beer yesterday because it has been a while since he drank last and also because it was Friday night, but since it was eclipse, he asked for permission to drink at home (actually he does this everytime since anna is religious and we don’t want to offend him but taking permission was especially important yesterday because it was eclipse yesterday). It seems anna did not really like the idea, but amma was okay with it because he will only drink after the eclipse (not during eclipse which is the auspicious time), so he ‘sort of’ got the permission and drank. Everything was really interesting :)