#Mangalyaan Sends MoM To Mars: Statements And Opportunities That We Missed

History would have been more perfectly recorded had ISRO sent the Mangal-yaan to Mangal-grah on a Mangal-waar.

I just fail to understand how come Prime Minister Narendra Modi let slip of this fact which would have helped him deliver a more interesting speech. He did say, “Today Mangal has got MoM. The time this mission was short named as MoM, I was sure that MoM won’t disappoint us,” but it was not much of an attention catcher.

But this was masked by the rounds of hurrahs taking place in ISRO which was being criticized for such a cheap mission. Its own people and foreign crusaders of Indian causes (ahem…) had discarded the attempt as a waste of time, money and energy just like disgruntled parents who never want to understand their children.

When ISRO succeeded in its maiden attempt placing the MoM in the red planet’s orbit, the achievement was so great that even the maun-vrat of Manmohan Singh celebrated. He said a few words in praise for the scientists at ISRO and quickly added that the mission was conceptualized during his tenure.

But there were many statements, reactions and opportunities that we missed in all the merriment.

For starters, ISRO briought onto itself the wrath of many Indians for not dispatching some politicians (Aiyar, Tharoor, Digvijay), media staff (Barkha, Arnab, Rajdeep, Sagarika), and bollywood bozos (read KRK) on the red planet. Now they are hunting down the main culprits with a red face.

If it was a disappointment not to see Digvijay Singh live from the red planet, it was a bigger disappointment to Singh as he could not use his ‘2002’ statements in context of the MoM. Even more, it was a disappointment for him that Rahul Baba was not being seen and heard more on Mars.

On the part of Rahul Gandhi, he was busy calculating the escape velocity of Mars and comparing it to that of Jupiter’s. Somewhere, we believe, it was his idea to give the acronym MoM to the mission. Two reasons: One, he loves his mom. Second, he always wants to empower women.

In fact, it may have been a collective thought of Congress leaders including Sanjay Jha.

It would have really been a powerful position had Ravishankar Prasad demanded the resignation of of all chiefs of all such missions who repeatedly failed considering India became the first nation from the continent to be successful.

However, this could have easily been masked by Subramanian Swamy’s declaration of Mars as a Hindu Rashtra by the power vested in him by we-don’t-know-who.

The news must have come as a setback to Arvind Kejriwal who was pining on the corruption in ISRO and its spending on the mission that he could have exposed. But the good news is that there is no Ambani-Adani and Lt Governor Najeeb Jung on Mars. Maybe he should reach there pronto and establish an AAP samrajya.

Height would have been when Derek O’Brian could have found a Mamata Didi connection in all of this. Mom, red soil, red planet = Maa, Maati, Manush.

But the most missed was a pertinent question that Arnab Goswami could have debated on the News-many-hour: What is ISRO’s fixation with ‘C’ – chocolates (Mars bar) and chewing gums (Orbit)?