Rifat Mohidin
BANDIPORA, JUNE 7: On a cold Wednesday morning a 10-year-old kid in Kashmir’s Bandipora town was praying in desperation for the sun to come out bright.
He wanted it to shine “for just a minute” so that he could see the rare transit of Venus while crossing the sun’s path. But like everyone else in Kashmir, Burhan Khatlani was unlucky.
A cloudy sky robbed the valley’s eager spectators of the rare celestial phenomenon which nobody can ever see again. The venus will cross the Sun’s path again only after 105 years, the scientists say.
Burhan a student of class 6 had travelled 10 kms early morning from his village Kunan to reach the town where a group of youth had voluntarily installed a telescope to witness the event.
“He has not slept the whole night. He was much excited to see the transit,” said his father Ather Khatlani.
“He kept praying all the time to God to make the sky clear so that his dream to see the transit came true. Last night when winds were blowing, he was telling his mother to pray for a clear sky in the morning,” Ather said.
But when the skies didn’t clear up Burhan could not resist and broke down. However, he still insisted his father to take him to the spot where telescope was fixed.
“Probably he was waiting for some miracle,” Ather said.
The youth who had installed the equipments said they had taken the initiative to bring awareness among the students. They had also invited a few scholars from the Kashmir University who demonstrated to the students the transit of Venus through Power Point Presentation and also showed live videos of the transit which where telecast from the NASA website.
“But all of us were disappointed alike. We were very excited, but what could we do,” say 30-year-old Ehsan Dewani and Wajahat Dewani.
Perhaps the video was something atleast that little Burhan could cherish.
