The land of ironies- India

I got one of those ‘Be proud to be an Indian’ mail today; yes, might be for the Nth time it has found its way in. I believe it’s something that goes around in circles and lands up in your lap as you are just another point in multiple overlapping social circles around you. The content is usually the same; we have 33% Indians in NASA, Microsoft, most number of doctors and engineers on the planet, the birth of zero and ayurved and the recent addition being to fact that we sent an actual probe to Mars at a cost less than a Hollywood movie about events in space. Not that I have an issue with such mails, but considering at times information in two mails actually conflicts, I often am at loss to understand who these mails are actually meant for.

Yes I can brag about what I read in the newspaper or a book and be the king amongst friends until they get the same mail, but when people around me do read, this mail has actually no value. But then it occurred to me that this mail was designed to turn me into Akshay Kumar from Namaste London and give that mega stats studded response to someone from the west who feels India is a land of snake charmers and tantriks. Yes, we love to believe that the west has just forgotten to update their knowledge about India and still love to live life in the 18^th Century. But coming to think of it, India has so many ironies woven in itself that I wonder why any foreigner should not believe in the folklore. So let’s just start here with what I have seen and experienced in India which kind of build this mythical idea of India.

I had a German visitor who had come down to India for his first visit and even though a well- traveled person otherwise, he had been told to look out for the elephant on the road. It took me two days to tell him things like; you landed on a world class airport, we moving around in cars that are much the same in his hometown in Germany and the only reason you are here is because we are buying the same high end automation systems in India, why should we have elephant in cities? On day 3- I was welcomed to a 15 minute video and equal number of photographs of an elephant walking on Worli sea face the same morning. By the end of the day, I was left with a feeling of being egged into submission that he was right.

But this is just one of the things that has got well entrenched in the minds of people that they just refuse to look further. Like a friend of mine went to Italy on a holiday and found the levitating sadhu outside a museum in Florence. Attractions in India for the less informed is yoga, Kamasutra and finding peace with some vague baba or spiritual guru who talks in a language they don’t understand; but who also gives an English translation. The more informed are coming to India for its English educated and well trained work force, its highly attractive and high spending consumer segment and its dynamic youth population. It is quite stunning that we invite large corporations to come into India and invest in our technological knowledge and the first return gift or memento for the visitor is chosen from Fabindia or Bombay Store as we talk about our rich handicrafts.

Now that’s about some ironies that build the face of India for people abroad. But ironies in India exist on practically every level and every product or service that exists in this country. Take for instance we have a toothpaste with salt and a toothbrush with charcoal bristles- I guess if that was what was needed right from the onset to keep my teeth healthy, people in India had been using salt and charcoal for cleaning their teeth since ages. Lemon and orange beverages mostly have a line saying- Contains no fruit juice, contains added flavour- apparently the dish-washing liquid I clean the glass with has real lemons. .  The flower decorations in almost every house are plastic and the air is carrying the floral scent emerging from room fresheners, reed diffusers and scented oils.

There are a lot of other ironies I am actually curious about. Like why do I get all the unsolicited calls from banks for credit cards; but when I have something to do with my own bank account or credit card, I usually have to either be on hold or go through the first minute on IVR menu to get my job done. For some reason the pizza delivery guy is more inclined to make space for himself to surge ahead in traffic while an ambulance driver keeps either honking or fighting for space. Also if you are waiting on a signal, the guy in the first lane right at the front is the most lazy to start off on the green- the 7-8^th car is the first to honk tough.  For a city like Mumbai, it is home to the most expensive real estate in the country along with the largest slum area having a GDP at par with some African nations.

As Indians we may take the pains to scrub our tongues clean, but the rest of social hygiene is out of the window when we colourfully decorate walls. Homes are spic and span; but the filth rests supremely on the courtyards and around buildings. It is actually both surprising and disappointing. A Hindi movie named Shanghai had an interesting line about India- ‘…sone ki chidiya; dengue- malaria, ghar bhi hai, gobar bhi hai….’ I guess that sums up my sentiments about ironies for now.  

The rat race and humans

Over the Christmas Eve and the days to follow I was on a binge watching mission of a HBO TV series called ‘From the Earth to the Moon’. Intriguing as the concept is, based on one of man’s greatest ambitions since the dawn of time the series was complete in the sense that it did not focus so much on the lunar landings alone- but the whole saga that unfolded in the political corridors, scientific community and the public at large after JFK made that bold statement to put a man on the moon within 8 years. This came at a time when all that NASA was doing then was well short of even taking a man into space, something the USSR had already managed. Just one of the reasons why I see projects involving Tom Hanks in a very different light than the rest- the research, the perspective and the narrative is most unique and comprehensive.

So just to paint a picture of the times: USSR is leading the space race and the president has made a bold public statement. Man in space is still a distant dream; both in terms of technology and achievement. But still within a gap of 7 years from the presidential address, the brickwork of probability was turned into the flights of possibility. Aircraft test pilots were now trained to go beyond the stratosphere and aircraft builders where building space crafts. Every person in every single department was in a run up against time and every failure was costly in terms of money, time, political ideology and at times even human life. Till the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon, everyone was eager to know the answer to the question; can man actually do it?

So at the cost of sounding filmy- who was the first man on the moon? Yes, Neil Armstrong. Who was the second??? And I guess there might be still be a few who will name Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin. But what do we know about Michael Collins, a man who sat there closest to these two men a few miles above and was pivotal in their safe return. How come Apollo 11 has become legendary and only two from the crew of three is who we recognize? How many of us know about any lunar mission from Apollo 1 to Apollo 17; or the fact that the Apollo programme was built on the learnings that came along from the Mercury and Gemini missions that were like test flights for the lunar landings.

The simplest explanation to all this came to me in an astonishing manner the human mind and memory actually works.  We as human are trained to be rats running a race to go from point A to B. The winner takes it all and there is no medal for coming in second. We have actually been tuned to be more oriented towards attaining goals and once achieved, we fail to recognise all the people and their efforts that went into reaching the goal. The worst is once the goal has been reached, our level of interest in the details dwindles and no level of achievement that might follow has any relevance in our minds. We at times tend to forget that there is a larger bunch of people and their sacrifice that hides behind the achievement of the larger goals.

Imagine the number of people who work behind the scenes to make every single flight possible. There are the ones who built the actual space crafts, the ones who built the simulators and prototypes. And then there were those who sat in the mission command in Houston not even blinking an eye lid when missions like Apollo 13 went haywire. We as people simply refuse to accept the people behind the larger picture. And this is not an American phenomena- even in a movie like Swades, SRK is asked if he is in NASA, is he an astronaut. Not in the same league, but the moment people know I worked in radio, I’m asked if I was an RJ… cause astronaut or an RJ- they are the face and that’s what matters to people.

The series also brought to the fore another aspect of human nature- something we call the short span of the public memory. After Apollo 11, possible Apollo 12 and Apollo 13 were missions where people were still attached to the TV with a curiosity of what happens next. When the last two missions got down to some serious scientific research, public interest and limelight both just vanished. In fact, a near flawless Apollo 17 was not even telecast as the romance of space had ended and the swinging 70’s were no longer having the attractions for it.

Today, no NASA missions actually attract notable mentions. India had a boom once the Mars probe Mangalyaan entered orbit; but on January 2^nd 2015, hardly any media carried its 100 days in orbit - nor has ISRO posted anything special on its site. This is what we should accept is our instinct of a rat race… we are all tuned till the first step; the ones that follow just never seem to matter.