Walker and his welding goggles

This happened many years back on the terrace of our building. The occasion was a solar eclipse that could be seen from Bombay. It was afternoon and some of us had assembled up there to have a look. Now for viewing an eclipse (looking at the sun) you need these extremely darkened filters. We carried along some discs ripped out from the old 1.4' floppies so that we could look through them. Later on we figured out that it was not sufficiently dark and might be dangerous to view the eclipse through them. Anyway we were still around on the terrace when Walker trooped in.

Walker is(was) an old employee of our company and held many senior positions, though not so senior. He came up with a tough leather pouch and produced a pair of dark welding goggles. He had a look at the eclipse through them and later on we queued up to do the same. (In Bombay to do anything you have to queue up). Once we all had our fill of looking at the ec - old Walker explained the story behind the goggles. It belonged to his father who used to work at L&T (an engineering company in Bombay) and the goggles were presented to him on the day of his retirement by his colleauges. (Probably old Walker Sr. might have been doing true hard core engineering work - welding and all). It was indeed a pleasant story. So that's the story of Walker and his welding goggles.

I remember this, since we are told that on the coming Monday is another chance to have a look at the solar eclipse from Bombay. It will be around the same time as the one I've just written about. We would as usual go up to the same terrace, and probably wait for old Walker to show up with his contraption. (Walker retired many years ago).

Many people are suspicious of viewing an eclipse - its a bad omen etc. The people who conjured up this belief must have been truly great, for if millions believe in what you say, what more can one want.