A New Personal Discovery:
The Planet Venus
Shrikant G. Talageri
This article will seem childish or naïve to people who are fond of astronomy and are used to star-gazing or like to observe celestial phenomena (comets, eclipses, constellations, rainbows, special planetary alignments, etc.). But as I have never really belonged to this category, the discovery of the planet Venus in the sky is to me a very new and recent phenomenon – practically a new discovery in the last two months, rather a late point of time in my life. So I felt impelled to write an article about it.
Since childhood, like every other human being, I have been acquainted with the celestial bodies that we see in the sky: namely, the sun, the moon and the stars. In fact, in childhood, the sky was a vast star-studded celestial ocean filled (in the evenings and at night) with countless stars. In my school days, going to Chowpatty (also called Girgaum Chowpatty, though I have sometimes rather chauvinistically felt that it should rather be called Gamdevi Chowpatty, since the well-known South Mumbai beach is closer to Gamdevi than to Girgaum) was a regular phenomenon in the evenings. In the nineteen-sixties in particular, many families in our area (mainly the women and children and youngsters) used to go in large groups on a daily basis and sit talking and playing for hours and returning home well after dark. The advent of Doordarshan TV in the nineteen-seventies gradually brought this regular daily social pastime to a near-halt, as more and more addicted families crowded in front of television sets in their homes (or initially even in their neighbours’ homes) watching films and music and other entertainment programs in the evenings rather than stepping out to the beach or to gardens.
Now I wonder how many years, or rather decades, have passed since I actually looked up at a clear sky and gazed at the moon or stars. I have actually been going for long morning walks since decades; but morning walks are not the time to observe star-studded skies, and it looks as if evening rambles do not seem to have been part of my itinerary for most of my post-college life. So it is actually only in the last two months that my attention was once more drawn to the skies. I have been going for 10-km. walks every day in the morning since at least two decades, and much more systematically so after I retired six years ago. But in the last two months or so, I started going for a second walk of around 5 kms. in the evenings with my sister and niece, both of whom are ardent sky gazers (or moon gazers). And it was during these walks that I discovered that the map of the sky (at least as observable from the streets and open spaces of our polluted cities, or, let me be specific, from our Marine Drive area) has changed like magic. After the sun sets (and even during its process of setting) the only celestial object (from among the sun-moon-stars triad of my childhood days) that can be seen in the sky is the moon – and one single star shining brightly in the northwestern part of the sky. The multitudes of other stars seem to have become absolutely invisible or almost so (though people with much stronger eyesight than me claim to discern a few stars faintly announcing their presence at stray points in the sky: but even for them this is nothing like what it was decades ago). In fact, (and I have no explanation for this) even the moon seems to be missing for more days of the month than it is visible. The only celestial object shining brightly in an inky-black sky seems to be this one single star, and I found myself getting increasingly curious to know the identity of this one single star which seemed to my feverish imagination to have driven all other celestial objects into invisibility. On making inquiries around, I found out that this was not a star but a planet: the planet Venus.
In the old days, there was no pollution, or at least very much less pollution as compared to the present day. So, anyone (out in the open, or even on terraces in their buildings – it has always been a secret sorrow for me that my house, though the best in the world and one which I would never exchange for any other, did not have a terrace in the building) looking up into the sky could see countless stars twinkling in the sky. Knowing (at least from school text books) the difference between a star and a planet, a little thought would have brought the realization that among those countless (hundreds/thousands/lakhs of) stars in the sky, a handful may be planets rather than stars. But not having any particular reason to be interested, this thought never came to my mind. And now, at this late age, I found out that the only celestial object in the sky that I can see on a constant basis in the sky is not a star but a planet: the planet Venus. Somehow (naïve though it may be) I feel as if I have had a celestial revelation which has electrified my knowledge of the sky. And now I feel as devoutly worshipful of the planet Venus as any other pagan feels about the sun and the moon.
Actually, I asked many of my acquaintances whether they had ever seen a planet (and specifically the planet Venus) in the sky, but as almost all of those whom I asked seemed to be as ignorant as I was in this matter, no-one among them ever had.
But, seeing that on most evenings during my walks, this planet is the brightest (and sometimes the only bright) celestial object that I can see in the sky, I began to wonder how the poets and lyricists and song-writers who write such soulful songs about the sun, the moon and the stars, could have failed to write soulful songs about the planet Venus. Being ignorant about the Indian/Hindu names of the planets (i.e. about exactly which Indian name corresponded to exactly which English name) I wondered whether the śukra-tārā referred to in an extremely popular Marathi song was in fact the planet Venus, and on examination I found that Śukra was indeed the Indian name of Venus.
Still, I find it amazing that there are so few songs glorifying the planet Venus which is such a bright and beautiful object in the sky. Apart from the song referred to above, I could find only one other Marathi song referring to Venus. The two songs are:
1. Śukra-tārā manda vārā- Arun Date, Sudha Malhotra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcyfcepghHE
2. Sūra dharite amruta vīṇā- Vasantrao Deshpande, Bharati Marathe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzeJ5OwhWnM
I have yet to find a popular Hindi song referring to Venus by the name Śukra. But a search on the internet informed me that the Urdu name for Venus is Zohra, and I could not find any Hindi song with that word either (though we do have the famous old singer Zohrabai Ambalawali), until my sister reminded me of one of my favorite Manna Dey songs from the film Waqt, which uses the word Zohrajabeen (“Venus-faced”; analogous to Mahjabeen “Moon-faced”, or, in Indian terms, Chandramukhi):
1. Ae meri zohrajabeen- Manna Dey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS3hWJ-vhhg
I will be happy to know (from anyone) about more Hindi, Marathi or other Indian songs glorifying the planet Venus.
