23-8-23.
Guess this would be the date that future generations will refer to when they are watching Earth from the moon.
The dark side of moon has always been a subject of inquiry and has/had a mystic about it. With its very second attempt, India and ISRO managing to reach there is nothing short of a phenomenon!! For a country that is in its 7th decade of being Independent, having been looted, pillaged, and ravished by colonial powers and foreign invaders for several centuries, and having to face humiliating treatment at the hands of those very powers who kept denying technical know-how and resources, our scientists showed the world up in a royal manner by landing Chandrayan-3 where no human has gone before. They dared to not just dream but proved the naysayers that, we are not just cheap skill and low wage resource laden country, but we can manage to land a craft on moon at 1/3rd the cost that those countries spend on making movies in that genre!! When Mangalyaan was launched successfully people compared the budget to Gravity movie and Chandrayan is compared with Interstellar’s production cost. But what these countries and their media comfortably hide is the cost involved in getting these people trained, cost involved in all those numerous sacrifices they’ve to put in to claim this fame in the form of long hours, re-engineering and imagineering solutions, that were readily available but were denied to them. ISRO has show the world that if you don’t share your skill, we will not only manage it, but make it in our own cost-effective way and will thumb our noses at your pompous and jealous attitude.
The moment the craft landed, I was browsing through media channels from other countries, specifically BBC, CNN, DW and whatever other foreign news channels that my cable operator provides. With roughly half hour delay, there was a scroller line at the bottom of the screen announcing the moon landing by India. Some mentioned that we are the 4th nation to achieve this, while no one mentioned that we are the first to south pole of Moon. And more importantly, the moon landing news was immediately accompanied by bridge collapse in Mizoram causing loss of 20+ human lives. Not to belittle the latter but I really wonder if any of them would’ve bothered to mention happenings of Mizoram on any other day. We can see it in two ways – that these guys need urgent supply of Jelucil and other antacids to avoid further stomach burn, which they are expressing by showcasing one off incident which carry the message that even though they can land on moon these guys don’t know how to build a local bridge. Other way of looking at it could be, the growing clout of India, where even a remote happening on an otherwise forgotten state, gets world’s attention. Whichever is the reason, Kadharittey Irungada.
Song dedication to those entitled powers to be on behalf of ISRO – “Mela eri vaarom nee odhungi nillu..keezha eranga sonna ada egirum pallu”
On a side note - Now that one Pragyan is already roaming around the moon, hope the kutty Pragyan masters the chess board. The pic of his beaming mom standing by the sideline, watching his son give interview, truly kannula jalam moment.
Comments
In a normal economic scenario, India should become the outsourcing centre of the world for all space activity. Sadly this will never happen, because space technology is inextricably bound to defence technology and no country is going to openly share it. If only we as a species didn't obsess with beating up each other, India should logically be the space capital of the world.