For three minutes and four seconds on Wednesday morning, an ethereal blue-grey darkness descended on this city of light. To the east across the Ganga, it was like God’s own eye flashing in the sky, giving pilgrims, bathers and eclipse-watchers in the jampacked ghats sights they are unlikely to forget ever. While clouds blotted out the view in most places in India, the century’s most spectacular solar eclipse was seen in full glory in holy Varanasi. It was a sight to behold. The eclipse displayed all the classical phases associated with the event. Seconds before the Sun was fully blocked by the lunar disc, a brilliant diamond ring formed in the sky. Moments later, brightness dropped dramatically as totality began, a phase technically called second contact, that began at 10 seconds past 6.24am. A roar went up at the ghats as people gasped and screamed in awe. Some stared in stunned silence while others shook hands with total strangers in fits of joy. The city was suddenly clothed in a surreal glow of faint light that was eerie, exhilarating and nothing like most had ever seen before.

Up in the sky, a soft white halo formed around the black ball of the lunar disc. This was the Sun’s atmosphere, called corona (meaning a crown), that’s visible from Earth only during a total eclipse. The sight is often called God’s eye, and in Varanasi on Wednesday, it appeared in the sky with a black eyeball and a white cornea. Spots of light, called Baily’s beads, appeared around the edges of the Moon’s disc and in photographs clicked by lensmen, rarelyseen solar prominences were clearly visible. These are huge masses of fiery matter that get spewed from the Sun’s surface and are pulled back by its gravity. At the same time, planets like Venus and Jupiter came back on, shining brightly in the sky under totality. Birds around the ghats flew in random circles, confused and dazed by the sudden darkness hours after dawn. ‘‘I’ve waited 15 years for this stunning show,’’ said Ravinder Singh, who teaches astronomy in Patiala. ‘‘What a spectacle we’ve had. I am privileged to have watched it.”

India’s next solar date after 105 yrs

Watchers, many of them gathered here from across the globe, were awe-struck by the eclipse. ‘‘Wow,’’ exclaimed Anindya, who is part of an amateur astronomers association in Delhi, when asked for a reaction. Mayank, another member of the group, asked back, ‘‘You want words?’’ Then, just after the total phase ended at 6.27am, another bright diamond ring dazzled in the sky, this one more mesmerizing than the previous. Then began the slow march of the Moon away from the Sun’s path, as thousands of dazed watchers tried to come to terms with the breathtaking show they had witnessed. The fact that such a spectacle would not visit India in another 105 years just added to the momentousness of the occasion.

Yet, at the beginning of the eclipse, it looked as if monsoon clouds would spoil the day for everyone. While the skies were clear at dawn, thick patches of clouds drifting in with the stiff breeze, blotting out the Sun just when the eclipse began. But the breeze soon blew away the obstacles, and by the time totality arrived, the clouds were incidental to the show. Meanwhile, the devout had been streaming into Varanasi’s ghats much before sunrise for the ritual dip in the river during the eclipse. Many of them chanted Sita Ram, Sita Ram, as they made their way through the sea of humanity for the purifying Ganga bath to cleanse themselves of the ill-effects of the ‘grahan’. The ranks of bathers swelled as the eclipse progressed.