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Happy Teacher's Day, Chandrayaan 2

India's first space mission in 1963

There are very few things that unite a country, while elected politicians do everything in their power to divide it.

Till yesterday, I was convinced that was sport.

What else can divide a country that speaks more languages than anyone can count and where cuisines change every 100 km or so?

Movies and music can stake a claim, but the whole nation seldom hums the same song at the same time or is in the thrall of the same movie.

So that leaves sport - the last man standing when it comes to hope and inspiration and integrity and dreams.

Last week, the whole country united in celebrating PV Sindhu.

3 years back, in the 2016 Olympic finals, she held the entire country to ransom when she took on Carolina Marin and lost.

She has struck silver many times but gold always eluded her.

Then she struck gold. Like someone who spent years drilling for oil and finally hit up a gushing well where the oil never stops flowing.

If you're drilling for oil, one well might be enough.

But you're an athlete, that's only the beginning.

Yesterday, India again celebrated. Not an election, not a victory in a sporting event. But a rocket lander that was 2 km away from the finish line and then just disappeared.

For a change, a country was celebrating a near-miss instead of success.

Till yesterday, most of us didn't know who the ISRO chief was or what exactly a lander was.
In a span of 12 hours, we knew both.

Chandrayaan 2's near-miss was the shortest physics lesson for most of us, yet moved us more than years spent looking at a textbook.

On Twitter, the hashtag #Indiafails was trending.

We've been taught to amplify success but hide failure like it is some condition we don't want others to see or know about.

Then we see a team at ISRO that has worked for years, tirelessly, see all their efforts hinge upon '15 minutes of terror' and watch their life's work hinge upon something not in their control.

The photo-op at the end wasn't a beaming team celebrating but of the Prime Minister hugging an inconsolable ISRO chief, K Sivan. Even if it was a move for the cameras, one thing that wasn't faked was the ISRO chief's abject disappointment.

I think there is a reason why the Chandrayaan 2 mission affected all of us so much, even though our knowledge about it was sketchy. It's because it made us realize that all of our metrics of success are hopelessly and tragically flawed. Most of us don't put our life's work on the line and then have cameras beam our near misses to the entire world.

When all of our carefully laid plans go awry, we don't know how to deal with them. We are taught to act and talk like successes, even when we feel like failures. We are told to 'play bold' , 'play to win' 'winning is everything' when we know most of those are just hollow words.

A moonshot, in a technology context, is a groundbreaking feat that is attempted without any assurance of success.

That's what Chandrayaan 2 was, a moonshot.

But the best thing about a moonshot is that inspires future generations to take a shot at it, to build upon something.

So Happy Teacher's Day, Chadrayaan 2.

I'm sure you inspired some kid somewhere to make a career out of exploring new frontiers and for teaching us that something other than sport can unite a country.

Thank you for opening our eyes to the scientists who don't get featured on front pages of magazines that are reserved for people who accomplish far less.

Thank you for showing us that failure is more commonplace than success and that all the things we consider to be signs of success are not.

In sporting terms, Chadrayaan 2 secured a silver, missing gold by inches.

If silver made us feel so good, imagine what it will be like when we finally get gold.


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