View of a comet in the eastern sky in the dawn.? 1948

            I was a school boy studying in the primary school in the late 1940's. My parents had built a new house at my mother's ancestral village at Thondamannaru in the north of Sri-lanka. The house had its front door facing the east. It gave us a gorgeous view of the sunrise. The early morning sun coming out of the eastern horizon was a wonderful sight to us children. Long before the sunrise, the Pillayar temple next door would have started it's morning "poosai". The sound of the tinkling bells with sound of chanting of ‘manthras’ was a part of the morning chorus which woke us up.

            On this particular day, I was awakened by a sound in the front veranda of our house, long before the dawn chorus. I saw that the front door was open and I crept out. I found my mother and a female neighbor looking to-wards the eastern horizon. There in the eastern horizon was something which looked like a "vilakku-maaru"- a fan shaped broom made of ‘ekel’ shining in full glory.

            Houses are traditionally built facing the east. From the front verandah of the house, above the ‘cadjan’ fence surrounding the house, we could always see the rising sun in all it's glory every day. On this day, long before the sunrise we beheld a wonderful sight on the eastern horizon. There was a multiple array of dark yellowish rays, rising out of the eastern horizon. These rays all seemed to be converging towards a point below the eastern horizon. The rays kept ascending towards the zenith of the sky slowly. Sometime later we saw the point, towards which these rays were directed also rising out of the eastern horizon. The point seemed to be like a ball of fire from which the rays radiated. It was an astounding sight.

            We could now see the eastern horizon lighting up with the rising sun. As the light of the rising sun increased the comets trails gradually faded. After sometime the ball of fire of the comet also faded. The red sun in all its glory came out of the horizon. It seemed to say that the earlier glory of the comet was nothing compared to its effulgence.

            My mother and the neighbor were talking in whispers looking at the awful sight. In their minds the village superstitions about calamities on a big scale were most probably uppermost. My mother with her Christian education and faith probably was not much influenced by these portents. Our female neighbor seeped in the village Hindu traditions was very silent.

            For me it was a wonderful revelation of nature. I carry its memory to this day. I never saw a comet to equal it in my later life. I remember the announcement of the death of Mahathma Gandhi after this event. Quite a lot of people in the village correlated these two events.

An  accordion started to play Song

https://youtu.be/uROOv1CHwk4?list=RD8BGYuH9Vxc4