Chandrayan I

Today India takes its first baby space into a mission that would take an object created in India to "Chandamama"

No i dont intend to be emotional about things in anycase..rather it is a matter of putting a few things in perspective..scientific perspective.

What exactly have we done ??

the picture on the left seeks to illustrate the relative distances between the various objects in space.

PSLV C11 the vehicle that took the Chandrayan I had its 13th successful launch today. so whats the big deal .. well the previous launches had been for our geosynchronous or polar synchronous satellites. the are barely out of our own atmosphere. if the earth itself is 12756 kms in diameter and the International space station is at just 400 kms from the earth surface .. then there are time when the ISS passed directly overhead Bangalore and Sunita Williams would have been physically closer to me than my parents who are a thousand kms away ..!!!! shocking ..!!! .. but true ..

So there lies the achievement ...till now we have been like fish barely breaking out of the surface of the Ocean of air that surrounds us.. our atmosphere...now we truly venture out..taking the first baby steps ...say hello to our nearest neighbour in space.

While Mamata Bannerjee stops industrialisation, while Raj thakeray beats up northindians while scores die in blasts in Manipur ..India awakens to the dawn of the Space Age.

Jai Hind.

Timelessness in epics

Shashi Tharoor .. the name rang a bell but somehow i hadnt read a single book by him .. and then Bangalore international airport .. waiting for my flight home .. Annual leave .. that much awaited break .

Leave is a privilege not a right .. a much cliched aphorism that every senior officer worth his salt has to impart to his subordinates. Nonetheless the leave is savoured and rolled on the tongue like a fine wine to enhance the experience and milk it for all its worth . I personally would like to leave my uniform behind..be a "civilian" for that interminably short period of an annual leave. get back into dirty jeans and a tee shirt. perform the cardinal sin of not shaving everyday( sometimes even twice!!) funny how freedom carries a new meaning when you dont have it . Air ..always present all around .. breathing in and out even while sleeping .. but put a plastic bag on the head and 2 minutes is all it takes to realise what "air" is worth.

The new physicist in our institute.. as out of place as CocaCola in Whisky in the Fauji environment.She said DRDO scientists should also get 2 months of annual leave .. "we too are Govt employees" . Hardly had any words to explain to her what an annual leave means to a soldier standing in 6 feet of snow in the LOC with his gun trained upon his counterpart across a man made line on a map ..and all that stands between him and a bullet is .. a tattered Bullet proof "vest" that would do justice to another undergarment considering the area it actually covers ..!!

I grew up listening to Sqn Ldr Rakesh Sharma telling me on Doordarshan.. "ussey kya samjhaoon chandni kya hoti hai jiskee ankhein hi nahin hain". So i dont try to ..well not anymore.

Aah but i didnt start out to talk of the Chandni .. no Shashi Tharoor got left on the way .. Actually he got picked up on the way .. Amazing how you can sit next to a person and hear him speak when you read his words.. The book "the great Indian novel" translated in hindi Maha Bharat Katha... ha ha ha .. Mom used to say ..every character in the world is ensconced in the two great Indian epics.. Ramayana and Mahabharata ...,.and Shashi Tharoor goes ahead and proves it.

My generation ..a generation of intellectual bastards .. who studied the "religious and cultural" history of india in our school texts...never knew what had happened in the india that our forefathers lived .. gloating in the glory of architecture and literature never exposed to the political strife that shaped the country today ..!! Educationists deciding what a student reads in his young years .. leaving a hole in his heart forever ... a space bereft of respect(or criticism) for the people who shaped the india he lives in today.

Another touching book that conveyed history through the glasses of another author ..Salman Rushdie and his "Midnights Children" .. both these books give me a sense of connect to the driving forces that shaped my country.

Does a book give me a warped view of history ?? do i see through the coloured glasses of the author .. Well 7 coloured glasses together make the colour white .. and i need to see the past through all the 7 glasses to see what happened. Hmm past and the future .. a relationship of entropy ....some other day ..another blog ..

The Rorschach

I think i got that right .. for thats the name of the test that the psychologists use when they show u funny inkblots and tell u to make sense of it ..
I mean for heavens sake ..how different does it sound from reading your future in tea leaves or reading the entrails of an animal in Julius Ceasars time ..!!
Anyway since it is one of the projective tests that is actually used by the shrinks so might as well read it up while i am at it .
Yet it does seem to be more reflective of the analyser than the analysee (if there exists such a term)
If i see blood .. hell i see blood ..period ...now u think thats abnormal thats your problem sweetheart .. if its looks like a rose to you .. maybe you are the one who has repressed desires that yearn for roses that you never got on Rose Day in school ..!!! ha ha ha.
Psychiatry would be interesting if it was more ordered.. actually the problem lies with the fact that the car engine decides that it is smart enough to decipher itself and repair itself..!!!
to understand something .. u gotta be smarter than that thing itself .. and being smarter than yourself sounds kinda paradoxical doesnt it ..??