India – Don’t Blame Shiva For The Tragedy In Kolkata
Update! As of Monday, April 4, the following news headline came to my attention: Kolkata flyover collapse: Four more arrested. The article begins, “Kolkata: The city police on Monday arrested four more people in connection with the city’s flyover collapse case that claimed 26 lives, taking the total number of arrests to eight.” I can’t even call this a sad situation. It’s criminal lack of consideration for human life! My article begins from this point on:
Thursday, March 31 may go down in India’s memory as one of those days, to say the least. The research alone kept me hopping as I tried to catch up. While I’m working–as always–on a different article, I stopped to pick up strands of news and ended up being broadsided by it!
Time
At about 12:15 on Thursday afternoon in Kolkata, India, a “flyover” bridge known as the Vivekananda Flyover in the midst of construction apparently for the last five years suddenly collapsed at the height of the day, leaving at least 24 dead, another 89 injured and dozens more missing.
The usual condolences from officials, of course, were forthcoming, and an immediate offer of sending funds to the families of the dead or injured was already made. Accoriding to CNN, relatives of the dead will receive US$7500 while the critically injured could expect US$3000.
But incredible amounts of work lie ahead with the assistance of the Indian army as they remove tons of cement, much of which was poured just yesterday (Wednesday) and is now the rubble under which taxis, auto-rickshaws, trucks and various other vehicles–and bodies–need to be found and removed. A heartbreaking scene to be sure.
I wanted a look at the chart because the damage was obviously so massive and exponentially multiplied in the cries throughout Kolkata on Thursday night. A mere partile of ±20/21 minutes separate Uranus from the Midheaven (MC) in the Flyover collapse with Mercury not far behind (1°09 orb). Pluto from its vantage point in the 6th house squares the Uranus-MC conjunction within 3° and Mercury within a 1°20 orb. While the Part of Fortune is also close to the MC, it’s not quite in the partile range. In one of the articles I read, however, the owner of the construction company blamed God for the bridge’s collapse. On seeing the builder’s finger pointing, one editor asked whether the builder was suggesting that criminal charges (an FIR) should be filed against God.
Shiva as the Lord of Dance – LACMA = ca 950-1000 copper alloy sculpture, Tamil Nadu
Incidents like these make me wonder whether the facts will be ferreted out as well as they could be. The IC of the chart forms a 53-minute partile conjunction to Neptune’s antiscion at 19 Libra 21. But of course nothing stands out in this chart, even beyond the Blooming Undecaquartisextile (Blooming UQSXT) I see between India’s independence chart and that of this horrific tragedy quite like that partile conjunction of Uranus to the MC in square to 6th house Pluto. It slaps you in the face. Of course no one expected it! But while they just poured the cement on Wednesday, such a fact just begs the question: How did they know the cement had been fully set in such few hours–especially with so many tons of cement that were needed?
I also wonder what kinds of contracts were in place between the builder and the powers that be who gave the go-ahead for the project five years ago. Wrapping my mind around a bridge called a “flyover” that takes five years in construction is simply a dizzying prospect for me. When it comes to these feats of engineering, it’s beyond my scope. I respect that.
Still, the now-retrograde Saturn in the flyover chart formed mere 6-minute partile conjunction to Juno in the nation’s natal chart, making me wonder about this. Remember, Neptune isn’t only still within orb but opposing Jupiter in tight square to that Saturn/Juno conjunction. My noting these placements, however, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t consider Mars, now square to Neptune especially since natal Mars opposes the flyover chart’s Saturn-Pluto midpoint–a 1°19′ orb–and forms that Blooming UQSXT! But look more closely because it doesn’t stop there. That sequence of patterns also forms the UQSXT Shadow Yod with natal Mars in semisextile to the natal Ascendant while the natal Ascendant sextiles the transiting Ascendant, forming the UQSXT to the Saturn-Pluto midpoint!
Do I elect to ignore natal Neptune’s UQSXT to the flyover chart’s Ceres, or natal Chiron’s UQSXT to the flyover chart’s Uranus and the Midheaven? I’m not sure I can! Neptune’s presence seems to stand out in the chart comparison and makes me wonder about this series of placements when the 9th house stands out so strongly in the flyover chart. I hope there’s a thorough investigation.
On the other hand, it seems as if there will be much that’s simply swept under the carpet. Two thoughts come to mind as I look at these charts: Corruption, and cutting corners. Is it possible that people could have lacked consideration of the value of human life for such things? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. Heaven knows I don’t want to think like that, and I’m trying not to. But the 9th house is legal issues.
The 12th, where natal Mars falls in the flyover chart, is one of the houses where we look for those hidden factors. The mutable T-square between the Jupiter-Neptune opposition and the Saturn square falls in the 2nd and 8th houses with Saturn in the 5th, bringing to mind these kinds of issues about values and life itself.
I wrote all of the above on Thursday night and hadn’t yet completed this article, as you can see. On Friday, before I had an opportunity to work more, the following news item arrived in my mail:
The big question asked on India Today’s To The Point show hosted by Karan Thapar was – Is there a purpose of justification in this finger pointing, or is the blame game a new low in Indian politics?
As a point of clarification, Mamata Banerjee is chief minister of West Bengal, where Kolkata is located. She pointed a blaming finger at the previous administration.
Seven quotes were offered in the article, one of which was obviously noted in the paragraph I had written last night:
“Corruption is a very big issue in this election in both rural and urban areas in West Bengal.” – CPI (M)’s Nilotpal Basu
The news continued to arrive in my email in the wee hours of this morning (it’s now Saturday, April 2):
The New York Times expanded on its coverage, noting that IVRCL has been subject to repeated complaints related to poor performance and its work ethic. The story seemed to confirm my suspicions about what had taken place before the collapse of the Vivekananda Flyover on Thursday.
While I worked to bring this article to my own conclusions from Thursday through today, two pertinent quotes from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations seemed to fit the whole story:
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong” and “Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies.”
The Cardinal square of the Mercury/Uranus conjunction to the Midheaven–especially so close–and Pluto in the 6th in Capricorn brings to mind my cautions I made way back on April 23, 2006 as I thought ahead at that time to when Pluto would make ingress to Saturn-ruled Capricorn. For students, Capricorn sits at the Midheaven of the natural zodiacal chart, so it was an extremely important point of ingress that would point to the focus of the next several years from November 27, 2008 on. Frankly, it’s been all of that.
I spoke at that time of accountability coming to the forefront of people’s thoughts around the world, not only in governments (local, state [provincial], national) but also of organizations and corporations. It would all fit. And here we are again, looking at the culpability of both government officials and the administration of a particular company.
While I see I still don’t have this particular thread uploaded to my site [and it’s only in compact form in my KISS (Keep It Simply Serious) Astrology group on Facebook], I will make a point of uploading that next from the Orkut files sometime during the coming week. It’s a huge but critically important file since it relates so much to this particular article.
Sorrow hits all of us at one time or another. But when it comes as a tragedy, like the devastation without exception wreaked on every nation around the world, it becomes the Human Tragedy that begs us to offer an outpouring of love and compassion to the nations and the people who have lost loved ones as well as sending healing thoughts to the world’s people since we have all suffered this loss. We are, after all, the family I first learned about in a book published by the Museum of Modern Art where Carl Sandburg wrote the prologue and ended it as follows:
“There is only one man in the world
and his name is All Men.
There is only one woman in the world
and her name is All Women.
There is only one child in the world
and the child’s name is All Children.
“A camera testament, a drama of the grand canyon of humanity, an epic woven of fun, mystery and holiness–here is the Family of Man!”
I later learned this theme in the Sanskrit words I say so often: Vasudhaiva kutumbakam, The whole world is a family.
How true.
May those who lost their lives, their immediate families, and all of us be comforted by the thoughts now that they are being enfolded in love from around the world.