This morning, my grandpa and I were sharing a cup of steaming coffee, sprawled over the newspapers. The astronomy enthusiast that he is, he began to rejoice at the news of our very own Chandrayaan finally penetrating the moon’s orbit. “All these things require very specific calculations. Sending a vehicle to the moon is not a cakewalk.”, he said. “Obviously not! Its spacewalk!”, I thought and chuckled. But on a serious note, I didn’t realize that a small chat about Chandrayaan would give way to so many more interesting facts. Things I’d never imagined or thought about. Things only your grandpa’s treasure-trove brains contain.

“I was a topper in astronomy during my college days.”, he said in a hushed tone. “There’s nothing I haven’t explored after that. I even studied a tangent off astronomy, thats astrology. I understand why people say a person’s fate is ruled by te stars.”

I usually smirk or guffaw sarcastically when someone talks about stars, horoscopes or astrology. But this time strangely, I wanted to listen to what he was going to say.

“In the olden days, there used to be palace astrologers who would wait outside the room, anticipating a child’s birth so that they could cast their predictions. Mind you, the point of precision was so high, that the prediction was made the second the child’s head popped out.”, he said.

“Wha? You serious?”, I said, putting down my cup of coffee.

“Of course.”, he continued. “And you know something queer? Do you know how the astrologers got to know that the baby’s head was out? The midwife would roll a lemon outside the room as soon as she saw a head. Wen the astrologers saw a little lemon rolling throught the door, they’d jump into action and start forecasting! Simple!”, he said.

I couldn’t help but smile imagining a bunch of old astrologers running after a lemon outside a delivery room. The idea was just too cute. And I still can’t believe we reached the topic of mere lemons, all the way from the mighty Chandrayaan!