Recommended viewing: 80% or higher monitor brightness.

After a long journey, this was our first evening in Ofu. Rishabh and I liked Ofu very much and in return, Ofu liked us too. Within an hour of our arrival, she gifted us a rainbow. Rishabh quickly got used to her sublimity, but I was pathetically slow in acclimatizing to her beauty. Her pale-yellow sandy beach was punctuated artistically by rocks and lava beds from early days of her fiery origin. The shallow water of the lagoon to our immediate right was slowly ripening in the westerly light like summer peaches. Clouds were gathering in her skies like swarming sorrows of a pianist. Everything felt enamoring, almost illicitly so. Ofu was getting ready for the sunset. I thought, this place is so beautiful, she doesn’t even know what to do with herself. Then came the sunset and Ofu proved me wrong. She knew exactly what she was doing. In mingling wildly with the evening, she was setting her phantoms free to became a fantasy.

Tags:   Ofu NationalParkOfAmericanSamoa Sunset colors Sunset Ramen Saha Clouds Reef OlosegaIsland Ofu-Olosega Manu'aIslands OfuBeach Beach SingleExposure PiumafuaMountain

© All Rights Reserved

[Recommended viewing: 80% or more monitor brightness]

Yesterday, scientists published evidence from a 15-year dataset for the existence of 'stochastic' gravitational waves. If you are not an astrophysicist or astrophysics aficionado, you will likely wonder what the big deal in that is. Although background gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein in 1916 as a part of his grand theory of general relativity, the phenomenon was not empirically proven and remained the next major frontier in Physics. To simplify, gravitational waves could be thought of as ‘disturbances’ or ‘ripples’ in the fabric of spacetime, somewhat like –but much weaker than– a body of water hit by a boulder. These 'waves' of undulating spacetime were predicted to propagate from massive accelerating cosmic objects (e.g., black holes or neutron stars), or cataclysmic events (such as collision of two black holes) of the early universe. To detect and measure them, one needs two components: galactic amount of space and a lot of time. Where could one find so much space on this tiny planet Earth? Enter Pulsars. Pulsars are a subclass of neutron stars (burnout remnant of past massive stars) that rotate rapidly and beam their emission along their magnetic axis at a certain frequency. You could think of them as galactic lighthouses that emit radio waves as incredibly regular pulses from all around the cosmos. With appropriate listening devices (gigantic telescopes), one could keep track of their position in the spacetime fabric. Should pulsars –that are spaced around the galaxy– undulate due to gravitational waves, spacetime between them and earth will be stretched causing variation in arrival times of their pulses in a correlated way (Hellings and Downs correlation, if you are nerdy). NANOGrav scientists painstakingly collected data for arrival times of such pulses for 15 years. And now, their analyses reveal that the 68 pulsars tracked for all these years were wildly dancing in those protracted ‘stochastic gravitational waves’, which have been rippling all over the universe from the dawn of time. How cool is that? Somewhere among those stars up there, Einstein must have muttered yesterday, ‘…told ya!’.

Now, upon lunatic reflections, one realizes that cataclysmic events of our own past often reverberate in our thoughts, actions, and our existence. Could those be our personal gravitational waves that ride the cosmos of our soul? Are there any pulsars in our being to detect these waves? Do these waves cause emissions of our existence to reach other ports delayed or hurried? I am not sure. Somewhere among those stars up there, Einstein will likely know and mutter, ‘…the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious’.

PS: 'Waves' in lake waters above were caused by a loopy tourist, who decided to deal with distorted gravitational waves of his soul by stripping down and jumping in the ice-cold lake for a stochastic swim.

Tags:   LakeLouise BanffNationalPark Alberta Canada CanadianRockies Lake TurquoiseWater Ramen Saha Reflections Sunrise

© All Rights Reserved

[Recommended viewing: 75% or more monitor brightness.]

The village of Vaitogi in Tutuila (the main island of American Samoa) preserves a Polynesian fable for many generations: the legend of the Turtle and the Shark. The fable involves a viewing of two sea creatures in tandem who don’t usually swim together. The backstory has variations, but they all have the same simple storyline – two human beings (lovers or family members), who have been rejected by the society-at-large, jump off the lava-rock cliffs to their death and embrace eternal togetherness in the sea. Many a generation of Samoan villagers have summoned these two immortal souls ritualistically by singing traditional songs. Under perfect conditions (or, by pure chance), the condemned souls respond to human pleas and manifest themselves as the shark and the turtle. Upon seeing a shark or a turtle (or both), village children exclaim, "Lalelei, lalelei, lalelei!" (Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!). Today, the lava-rock cove (aptly called the ‘Turtle and Shark’) and this Polynesian folklore are open for visitation six days a week (except Sunday).

Of our four days in Tutuila, we spent three evenings at the cove but did not see any shark or turtle. Seeing these legendary animals would have been nice but that was not the primary purpose of our repeated visitation. The Vaitogi lava cliffs have several picturesque formations including one of the biggest blowholes on the island. At high tide, one can hear the ocean grumble under the rocks one stands on. I was intrigued by a purlicue-like formation (above), where angry tides swerved around and then crashed against the rocky ‘thumb’. Upon slamming on the calm firmness of these rocks, the moody tidewater shattered into fluidic smithereens and created momentary but aesthetic fountains and waterfalls. Viewing them under psychedelic sunset colors was addictive and trance-inducing. In my trance, I heard faint songs floating in the warm seabreeze, perhaps sang long ago by Vaitogi children to summon the turtle and the shark.

“A ua'ina, a la'ina
A solo e mata'ina
Lou galu tu'u la le i'a…”

(“In rain or sunshine
Let us see you
Gaze at the fish…”)

And I whispered to myself, "Lalelei, lalelei, lalelei!".

Tags:   AmericanSamoa Tutuila Vaitogi TurtleAndShark LavaRock PacificOcean Waves Sunset colors Sunset Ramen Saha SingleExposure Samoa PagoPago

© All Rights Reserved

Water flows. Rocks do too.

Tags:   Yoho YohoNationalPark Canada NationalPark NaturalBridge Ramen Saha KickingHorseRiver Field BritishColumbia BC SingleExposure

© All Rights Reserved

That edge –that beautiful edge– is a philosophical reality where dimensions of my existence collapse all around me like a thunderous waterfall.

Tags:   SunwaptaFalls JasperNationalPark Jasper Ramen Saha Rock Water Waterfall Desaturation SunwaptaRiver Alberta Canada

© All Rights Reserved