Chandrayaan-1: Lift off for India – Thumbs down for India's English media

October 22, 2008: 6:30 am (IST)

India sent its first Moon Mission, the Chandrayaan - 1, this morning.
I waited for the live telecast, then sat wide-eyed through it with goose-bumps for company and then watched and rewatched it on all news channels available to me.

I watched the anticipation, the countdown and the blast off with the enthusiasm of a 30-year-old who grew up on comics and stories and legends of the Apollo moon missions.

I was reminded of lazy noontimes lying sprawled on my tummy on the floor of my balcony crawling the Marvel comics' version of the Apollo moon missions, the test flights, the agonies and the triumphs that was part of the whole package.

I still remember my 10-year-old self sitting with a 6-year-old neighbour in my lap as he turned page after page of the same comics book with the same wide-eyed thrill of unreachable skies. This was the routine every April afternoon for the next four years :) The kid went on to be a mechanical engineer and I love to think that his desire was formed on those precious afternoons.

I remember my 16-year-old self lying on my terrace in early evening twilight and gazing at the moon and thinking of the secrets it embraces and gives away to only those courageous and far-thinking enough to attempt to pry those secrets - An hour later, I was on a bus which took me away from home for the first time and I stymied the longing to go back to my home comfort with thoughts of the lonely moon and the men brave enough to have visited her.

Today, I watched the lift-off and then trawled through the 130 channels available to me searching for a news channel to give me the juice on the Chandrayaan-1. I was bouncing in my seat, excited, thrilled, speechless with overwhelming joy, sending prayers and love across to hundreds of scientists and engineers who worked towards this iconic day for India.

In minutes, I was deflated. This gave way to crushing disappointment followed by a heart-breaking betrayal and a realisation of Indian media realities. In moments, I had come down from the thrilling skies back to sodden earth.

No English news channel could give me anything besides the mandatory blast-off visual.

I log on to the internet, hoping for something to satiate my Chandrayaan-1 hunger: nah da...moon mission can go to the skies, but the rotten politicians of the land deserve more screenspace and wordspace. Well, I didnt know that.

To the English media of this land - you who boast and pride yourself on moulding yourself to American media ideals of yellow journalism - I strongly doubt that if this was the first US moon mission, they would have filled time and space with the general divisiveness of politics. Instead, there would have been stories of scientists, of mission timelines, of what their breakfast constituted, of hurdles and achievements and talkshows of when they can send Man to moon.

Not in my country. We consider scientists as boring entities, we give them ridiculously mangy facilities and while attending page 3 parties with the 'right' people, we will ridicule and crib and rant about how little our space mission has achieved.

40 mins later, Asianet - a Malayalam channel, satisfied my craving. They had a 15 minute capsule of engineers assembling the machine that is right now orbiting our planet on its way to Earth's constant companion in good times and bad.

I have an Indian's fool hope that some children somewhere in this country caught the coverage and watched it wide-eyed with goosebumps for company and thought 'to hell with breakfast'. I hope that there will be more children and young people clueing in to newspapers and tv news to track that solitary rocket.

I certainly shall.
So I can revisit those lazy afternoons which seem to have passed aeons ago.

Those afternoons did not send me to moon or even space.
But I orbit imaginary words, I land on uncharted worlds and breach new boundaries of the space of my imagination.

Resounding cheers for all scientists, engineers, mechanics and the chai boy who kept them all well-supplied with the energiser liquid :)

Thank You for this day.