Of all the planets Ava liked Uranus the best because it was different from others. It was a beautiful blue and rolled on its axis horizontally around the sun, unlike others. She often imagined it to be rolling on a hypothetical elliptically shaped floor. It was also speculated that Uranus has a phenomenon called diamond rain in its atmosphere. She wondered if there was life on Uranus, the uro-sapiens would just have to hold out containers during rains to collect some precious pieces. At the same time diamonds would be really cheap in Uranus due to abundance. Maybe they’d even build houses out of it, she wondered. And eventually could there be some kind of trade between Uranus and Earth where they could export diamonds to us in return for grocery or oil? That would be interesting. “The Diamond Route” it would be called, she thought.
Anni was also interested in planets but in the way they affected humans and animals on earth. They also had a pet dog Scurry. Since its birth time and place were known he often used it to understand its weird yet cute temperament and behaviors. One thing in Scurry’s chart that aroused Anni’s curiosity was that it indicated space travel. The only way this could really come true was if Ava became an astronaut. And given her brilliant mind, this was not a remote possibility. In fact, Ava’s chart also showed space travel as a strong possibility. She also had indications of traveling and living in a foreign country. If this was possible, Scurry would tag along his mistress during one of her interstellar trips and look adorable in a spacesuit! Being a passionate astrologer, he wanted to take up astrology to the next level. He had already started an Instagram page on “Astrology for your pets”. The page had gotten 250 followers within the first month itself! His users were youngsters who mostly dug the weekly posts and predictions on sun and moon signs.
A curiosity point for Ava and Anni around these planetary worlds was that of the existence of Rahu and Ketu. Indian Vedic astrology recognized Rahu and Ketu as planet-like massless bodies -orbits formed by collection of points in space where the orbital paths of the sun and the moon intersect. These affected human minds such that Rahu caused craving to arise in humans while Ketu detachment. As in, they were opposing forces. While astrology viewed these as subtle or shadow planets with no mass, astronomy has never included them in the solar system. Did the difference of inclusion arise because they could not be seen or detected by the naked eye or scientific instruments but only be perceived by attained meditative minds? Wouldn’t it be amazing to do a scientific experiment to detect such massless yet dense planetary entities? Ava and Anni nodded on the thought.
