Serendipity : Musings of an Islander

Once in a BLUE MOON : Most of us might have heard the phrase Once in a blue moon but did we ever see the blue moon!  Well on 31st A ug 2012 , there is an opportunity to actually see a B lue M oon. Don’t believe! read on. We know, as the M oon orbits the E arth, it waxes & wanes through a cycle of phases over a month. Precisely speaking this is not true; in fact, the lunar month is 29.53 days long and not 30 days. This means M oon arrives half a day earlier every month. This “half day” mismatch causes the full moon to advance itself every month. Each calendar year thus usually contains 12 full moons plus an excess of roughly eleven days. Therefore after about every 2.7154 years, there is an extra full moon. During such time, it’s possible to have a full moon early in the month and still fit in a second full moon during the month; this 2nd full moon in a month or the 13th in year is called a B lue M oon. A B lue M oon is thus the 2nd full moon in a calend...

Is A&N I slands onl y about E nvironment, F orests, W ildlife, and T ribes? If the answer is NO , then how come there are 31 G ovt settled revenue villages under B uffer Z one? Andaman and N icobar I slands used to be a place appreciated for peaceful coexistence, untill a cat named B uffer Z one ( BZ ) was let out of the bag on 08/12/2010 , ie the day Buffer Zone was implemented in select areas of A ndaman I slands. Since then islanders, especially settlers from N orth and M iddle A ndamans are having sleepless nights for the reason - the controversial B uffer Z one N otification ex post facto brought 31 historically settled revenue villages into its ambit, that too without public discussion. A look into the background reveals the issue could be traced to S ept 2004 notification ( N o 159/2004/F No 1-752/2002-TW (PF) dated 15/09/2004 ) wherein a bunch of GPS points ( L atitude and L ongitude) relating to some parts of S outh and M iddle A ndaman were released and the...