I)

I have been thinking about the total solar eclipse experience from April 8th, 2024, at Conway, Arkansas. It was one of the best experiences I have felt, and no words will be able to describe what I felt and what everyone felt collectively on the magnificence and beauty of the totality when the moon completely covered the sun and the light/presence it had. It was so beautiful, so gorgeous at the utmost grand scheme of things.

To describe the experience and the sensation of what I saw is unjustifiable just through the words here, but you know the sentiment. I leave you to imagine what this adult Nish felt like in the awe-ness of astronomy. The universe is so grand, solar system is so grand, earth is so grand, we are all so grand, yet the insignificance of life hits almost daily, and amidst that “Ya, Life is inconsequential. We are just a minute insignificant little entities on [[Pale Blue Dot]]“ narrative, just watching the totality (not 99.9999999…%, but 100%) was able to justify why we exist, that we’re conscious and we want to experience whole of cosmos within our little “self”.

I remember I was in class 9 when there was total solar eclipse near our region (near Nepal, but not exactly at Kathmandu). I remember exactly what my mom said “Bahira na jaa. Grahan lagne wala cha” – roughly translated to “Don’t go outside. Eclipse is happening soon today” – while I was there feeling angsty of not getting to experience what it would feel like to see the sun when the moon hides behind its beauty. The young Nish would have equally felt so much existential angst just imagining about the grand-ness of it all, and yet I tried looking through a cassette reel and it didn’t work. That day, I just had FOMO of not being those “chosen people” who were so cool enough to go outside over NAST (National Astronomy observatory lab or something) and get to see moon-eating-the-sun event. But that was it. I got to learn so much about eclipse that day just by watching the TV and interviews from the scientists on a national television.

…and then life happened and I forgot everything….

Occasionally I used to see/read news about lunar eclipses and some solar eclipse events throughout the decade of 2010s but I think I didn’t truly care[0] - Maybe “focused” would be a better phrasing. A lot of things happened, and the “Math-physics-astronomy-loving” Nish got into life spirals, with so many things (mostly lows) happening that the Nish didn’t realize he was getting more and more nihlistic and fatalistic about the world.

But this time it was different. I had the “wings” on me to drive forth my enthusiasm and awe-ness to actually push myself to see the totality. It’s absurd how lucky we humans and the Earth is to have living beings just minding their own business here and there, eons of evolution and what not. The improbableness of we existing is so high, yet here we are, all trapped in this little [[Dot in a dot]], in our own little world. Yet here I am describing what I experienced, through these digital words written in some corner of this rock floating through space, around a mid-size star, that provides a gravitational orbit to another floating rock (the Moon) which happens to influence a lot of events, culture, speculation, art, poetry, fiction and non-fiction that drives forward the entirety of human civilization.

It’s not just we humans, but other living beings that get to feel the effects of the trio system of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun.

It’s so absurd, you know, that we get to experience the total solar eclipse in our lifetime. And I just happened to be almost at the right place and almost right time with decent amount of resources and agency to go watch it.

Like… it’s so beautiful and absurd to imagine because the orbital plane between Earth and Moon is tilted 5 degrees wrt that of Earth and the Sun and there are only 2 points of alignment for the solar eclipse to happen. And just imagine, the absurdity of the Moon completely blocking the Sun from our tiny little observation on some land surface. It’s mindblowing too that the Moon is just at the right size and right distance and the Sun is too. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even get to experience the totality.

II)

Yosh! Enough of Nish’s lecture on astronomy. Enough about evoking existential crisis to you, THE READERS.

Basically, I was fixated of going to see the totality no matter what. That’s why, I had decided that even if noone is going, I’d just drive alone and live that experience. I told everyone in the group (11 I think) and created excel sheet to track who will be going, where to go, weather conditions and all the uncertainty. After a lot of fidgetting around, we were finally 5 of us and we drove to Arkansas to see the totality.

It was the first time when I took control of planning the trip and all. It was definitely some “feel-good” opportunity to make other people realize that I can be dependable as well. I just had right support from good friends and peers, and they trusted me with the decision to go wherever I chose. It was also after a long time that I drove for long hours, (more than 4 hours?) one way and made me realize that I can drive safely as well like I always do (just flexing myself :/). Let me try to to do a very brief explainer on how the trip was (travel and all, not the totality).

Sunday, April 07, 2024, a day before totality

We were supposed to leave at 10am and hit the highway by 10:30 am. But it didn’t pan out and we hit the highway around 12pm roughly. We were heading to a motel at Little Rock, Arkansas. Estimated travel time around 6hours. We, reached little rock by 7pm, got ourself unloaded onto the room and by 8 pm were in a Japanese buffet place where we ate like we hadn’t eaten for eons. (Okay okay, we overate till we didn’t have any place in our stomach, not even dessert!)

We hit Little Rock’s downtown and were just strolling in the night. But it was a beautiful stroll nevertheless, as we kept on looking at the giant bridges (we were almost under it, near the river shorelines). There was also an art/sculpture park and it was very captivating for me personally because “yay, art”.

By midnight, we were back to our room and by 2am I was already on bed because I was exhausted from the drive.

Monday, April 08, 2024, the morning of totality

I woke up early, whining and trying to wake everyone (me being me) and started looking on the interweb to see where we can go to watch the eclipse, while also keeping an eye on the weather.

I recommended to go to Conway, Arkansas, explore the situation of crowd and maybe go to Russellville if it didn’t pan out in Conway. Conway happened to be 30 minutes away from Little Rock. So, we decided to go there and have lunch.

The lunch place just happened to be within the university’s region and we saw so many people on the side of the road with eclipse glasses, cool t-shirts (like “Toadality”, etc.), and so many spectrum of people excited about the eclipse.

And we loved it and decided to just stay there to watch the eclipse. And it was also by accident that this thing happened. Imagine being at the right place at right time, just by some serendipity. It truly felt “damn” for us.

By the time we finished our lunch, and in the parking lot, the eclipse was few minutes away. So we decided to get into the university “eclipse parking” or something. And we were redirected to a free parking spot. We took out chair and water bottles and headed to the main event area which we didn’t anticipate was so amazing.

III)

When we saw the whole crowd in the main area, we realized it was truly a festival. It’s so cool to see people celebrating the eclipse like a festival. It was a reminder for me that people in this country know how to appreciate science truly and made me feel that Nepal is long way off from this. I actually felt like I was in some sort of “coming of age” movie, with summer right around the corner and the music added so much to everything. Stalls everywhere. T-shirt stalls, lemonade stall, drinks, food, everything. People with telescope. Kids, elderly people, parents, lovers, singles, everyone. Someone in a dinosaur costume holding a sign saying “We thought it was eclipse too”, tributing for the asteroid that caused extinction of the dinos. And a giant board in the stadium that was projecting the eclipse itself, as the moon was slowly eating away the sun.

“Dinosaurs: Yeah, we thought it was eclipse too”

It was so fun and overwhelming feeling because we don’t get to experience here in Huntsville (not even in our university). And made us realize that we made a good decision to do the travel.

I was intermittently looking up, truly being amazed that slowly, bit by bit, second by second, the sun was getting “blackened” by the moon. What a time it felt. I (we) was also looking at the shadows from the leaves and didn’t realize that they were also slowly projecting the partiality until when a friend showed me that they were eclipse projection as well. It felt like a psychedelic experience just looking at the shadows, trying to create pin-hole sort of thing through hands/fingers, and slowly and slowly it was getting dark. The weather was changing. It was getting chilly. Cool breeze dispersing around. Sky getting redder and redder, changing color from blue-black to reddish/orangish. And the sun was slowly fading away through the eclipse glasses. I was lying on the ground, to feel everything. To feel that moment, the grandness of that event, and not wanting to miss anything.

IV)

Finally, it happened. I no longer saw the sun through the eclipse glass and I didn’t realize what it entailed until I looked directly up in the sky. Fucking WOW. JUST WOW. That moment right there gave me chills down my spines. Goosebumps. Freaking “WTF” moment. I hadn’t even remotely imagined that it’d be that jaw-dropping [1] - I don’t have any words to describe TBH. It was so much emotions running through all at once.. I can’t even describe that sensation. Really. Those who said they saw the eclipse back in 2017 said the same thing and I was like “seriously?” and now I got to experience it and I have the same reaction. You will truly appreciate the event when you see it with your bare naked eyes.

It felt like some kind of apocalyptic sort of sensation, when the moon was lit up by the sun behind, like the universe put a filter on the atmosphere in front of the sun and the light was blurry-beautiful radiating around behind the moon. The whole region became dark. It was a like a sunset in the middle of the day at 1ish pm. What lasted for around 3 minutes felt like an eternity of salvation. It felt like, heavenly body got enlightenment. As I now think about it, it felt like some alien (hello Superman!) could just spawn on the air out of nowhere and we’d be worshipping them. I could imagine how ancient people could associate event like this to some “god” / “diety”.

It’s so absurd (again) to think that when totality faded away, just from the bottom right corner of the blockage, 0.00001% of sun emerged, it was too bright. Like seriously, the sun is the brightest star near us and 99.99999999….% of blockage wouldn’t even feel like what 100% of totality felt like. Truly marvelous.

The sun is a giant laser beam….

Another aspect of the whole thing during totality was how less “noisy” the crowd became. Everyone was simply awe-inspired. Emotions felt. Experience acknowledged. That’s all.

It’s also kinda psychedelic how shadows were formed from leaves. Crispy shadows. Wavy shadows. Crescent shadows. Mini eclipse on the ground. It felt like I was on shrooms and just hallucinating those shadows.

eclipse shadows

V)

As I sit on my bed at home here, I kinda get it why people say “you need to experience it live to see what I mean truly”. I also got reminded how much precious and beautiful the first experience of things like these are. I associated it with a memory when I hit the beach and ocean for the first time last year, where I had sensory overload just seeing the vastness of it all stretched across the infinity. Teary eyed for sure. And this time as well, I felt similar tingling sensation, almost cried.

Once again, this is a reminder that how much we’re running on a hedonic treadmill in our own big-little world, we’re bound to the laws of nature, the governance of the universe, the cosmic backdrop where we are just another dot in a dot in a dot in a dot….. We think the home we live is big. We think the city is big. The state is big. The country bigger. The continent bigger. The oceans bigger. The hemisphere bigger. The earth bigger. The solar system bigger. Andromeda our neigbor. One solar system where we’re just like an ant on a thin wire, traversing our own lives, and yet whenever we look up, we realize the monumentality of the universe. How insignificant everything feels, and yet how big everything is. Too much to contemplate in our tiny little brain-goo.

The milky way galaxy grande. Andromeda our neighbor. And 200 billion (2×1011) to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe itself. And the galaxies form clusters, which form super clusters and what not. It’s hard to contemplate and realize the scale of the universe. Just thinking about it right now on my bed is giving me existential crises.

Now that totality has gone, I am looking forward to more such events. Next up is in Europe in 2026. But before that, I really need to go see northern lights which I had been meaning to see for the past 10 years or so.

VI)

It’s hard to not think about all the things that happening in our lives, associating that our problems are unique and are the most important. But event like this makes me realize that Life is inconsequential. Impermanence. Everything comes and go. The sun will disappear truly someday. Moon will drift away from the orbit. Earth will be something else. And our identities will no longer be relevant. My existence will no longer be relevant in next 100 years or so to come. So, acceptance is the path to being calmer. And totality helped me reinforce some thoughts that I need to live life the way a child lives: with curiosity, awe and wonder. Good going the young little Nish who had the FOMO of total solar eclipse. Good going. :)

totality

I got totalled down with awe

Footnotes

• [0] - Maybe “focused” would be a better phrasing
• [1] - I don’t have any words to describe TBH. It was so much emotions running through all at once.
• [2] - On a tangent, I miss the octopus lady. I wonder how she felt looking at the eclipse. Whether she got to experience the totality. I can only wish her good vibe. I love you pyari. And hope someday you get to read this by accident. :)
• [3] - So grateful for everyone who made the trip and the travel a success, fun and more tolerating. :)