Ode to Chandrayaan and Pragyan

So our Chandrayaan has landed on the moon, become history, and an ever-shining badge of honour on the 56 inch – and still expanding – chest of ISRO. Undoubtedly, it is ISRO’s another glorious leap into space that makes India proud. This is ‘Science India’ at its finest best. How magical were those moments when Chandrayaan-3 descended on the pock-marked lunar face with the surgeon’s precision and nimble-footed feminine softness! ... Never mind the sudden juxtaposition of unsavoury political overreach – both by sight and sound – just when we were devouring those final moments with breathless anticipation, awe and wonder!

With this epoch-making Chandrayaan event India proudly rubs shoulders with the world’s high and mighty- the haughty world-chowkidar, the US; Russia – a great country of Pushkins, Tolstoys and Yuri Gagarins but sadly going through unhappy times at present; and of course our bad, wily neighbour- the hegemonic, border-grabbing China.

This indeed is a moment of glory for India. Chandrayaan-3 and Pragyan have become our national icons: ‘neighbour’s envy, owner’s pride’. It is a triumph of science over superstition and over our parochial, religion-obsessed mindsets. It is also a clarion call for our lawmakers to rise above their win-at-any-cost, political whataboutery and let science grow and prosper; let Darwin and his ‘evolution’ illumine the school text-books and elevate the minds of our kids (and not dump science in the cesspool of religious bigotry); let our scientific institutions bloom and the ‘clear stream of reason’ and freedom flow, and let liberal grants provide them the oxygen and muscle (not curtail funding as has been done with ISRO).

Besides ISRO, it is also time to salute our old visionaries – Nehrus, Bhabhas, Sarabhais et al who had the foresight, dedication and inspired commitment to put in place such beautiful temples of ‘scientific striving’: ISRO, BARC, the IITS, IISc, the JNU, for the furtherance of science despite odds and constraints, when slavery-mukt India, after its blood-soaked vivisection was going through the most painful pangs of birth.

But digressing a little now, I wonder if with increasing footfalls of science on it, will our Chanda Mama lose some of its mystical charm … its magical pull in our imaginations? Will the images of Chandrayaan and the hard, pot-holed moon surface now interrupt our soulful singing of lullabies to our little ones invoking ‘Chanda Mama door ke’: Mama who would eat ‘puas’ in a big thali … who the Munna would go visiting in a udan khatola and play with stars– the most popular of rhymes?  Will a love-smooched suitor hold his tongue a second while extolling the beauty of his sweetheart singing “Chand si mehbooba ho meri tum?” Or that heart-tugging Rafi number “Chauhdaween ka chaand ho…?” (the song that even now would be the first on my lips if I were young enough to woo my heartthrob!)  With moon and mars having become so reachable, and Musks of the world eyeing them for tourism, the world powers for milking/exploiting them for minerals and for more devastating warfare, will our poetic flights of fancy cease to soar high and free anymore?

Well, ‘tis an age of science. We have to move on and scale new and ever higher horizons to unravel the mysteries of our big wide cosmos. But science doesn’t have to be exclusionary. Science and art can blend, nurture each other and flourish together (while toxic religious fanaticism can go on a long sabbatical) to elevate humankind – one by quenching the thirst of our inquisitive minds, the other by enriching our souls with music, verse and artifacts and thus make our lives sublime.

Here’s hoping that ‘Science’ keeps working at its noblest and is not weaponized (or ‘Oppenheimer-ised’!) by man, the monster for universal annihilation.

Bande ISRO. Bande ‘Science India’.

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