Ravi and Dharini

Photo credit: www.outerplaces.com
Memory tag: On reading about a couple named Ravi and Dharini that fuelled my imagination to invent this tale.

When I read your names together, I loved the way they complimented each other. It made me wonder if the elements you were named after were incomplete without each other. This, blue planet, Dharani, one out of an immediate family of nine siblings is, the most beautiful, most alluring and the only one alive with the gift of life, only when powered by the sun. Life on earth, its beauty, would disappear if the sun didn’t shine. Does the sun power this blue beauty out of a sense of duty, inevitability of natural phenomena, or because he is in love with her? Would he be desolate if he did not see her every morning? Is that why he wakes her up, with dawn colors, to tease her out of star dust scattered dreams? Is that why the sun lingers over farewell every evening, painting the twilight skies a new, to say don’t forget me, I will come back tomorrow .Is the twilight blush actually a reflection of her reply? And as the evening draws the curtains, she pins them back with a star to catch a glimpse of the sun looking back at her.

Did he first meet her amid her siblings and gaze speechless at her beauty? Or was he taken by surprise at her ever changing moods? Now summer, now winter, now calm, now stormy, now pacific, and now volcanic? Every hour brought a surprise as she spun her way through the day. He was never sure what he would see, she was so delightfully unpredictable! She never would be enveloped in an impenetrable veil of unchanging cloud like her sister Venus. It was never a continuous angry red Martian face or an ever inscrutable huge Jovian face, nor cold Neptune or Pluto whom he could not touch with his warmth. This terrestrial beauty was vibrant, ever changing, with a fascination he could not understand, his solar priorities changed. Not that anyone would question the monarch’s choice of his queen. Only naturally he longed to be close, enfold her, hold her close….he almost boarded his splendid horse drawn chariot and nearly set off when just in time he remembered. He sank down, head buried in his arms let the reins drop, a figure of complete dejection. When he was initiated into becoming a burning star, he was warned he had the power to give warmth only from afar; he would burn anything he loved if he went too close. Slowly recovering from his grief he called in the royal astronomers and asked them to calculate the least distance he must keep from his beloved. Nobody wanted to be wrong even by a second in a so delicate, dangerous and piquant a task. They were all sworn to secrecy and worked relentlessly. When the calculations were over, on an auspicious day they set out to meet the king. He welcomed them with well cultivated nonchalance but dispatched the rest of the waiting audience with scarcely disguised impatience.

When he first learnt it would mean only a eight minute distance, his joy knew no bounds! He was almost distraught when it actually translated into almost 150 million kilometers! Though he could not fault them, he commanded them to find a way out. After a long silence the youngest of astronomers found that his beloved Earth could be at the minimum distance of 147 million kilometers during the Northern winter in the first week of January. It would mean he would have to request his unpredictable beloved to dance on an elliptical orbit forever. He was mercilessly bound by his vow. Before he could say anything there she was on his view! Ravi realized it was January and she had read his heart and mind. The astounded royal astronomers gazed spellbound and later honored the mean distance from the sun to the earth as one Astronomical Unit (AU). A perfect compliment!