South Asia Daily

Faster expanding universe and deluded men of certitudes

This image shows a region in Saturn's outer B ring. NASA's Cassini spacecraft viewed this area at a level of detail twice as high as it had ever been observed before. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Three different stories about the universe/space/solar system in the past few days have helped take my mind off the brazen chicanery and skullduggery unfolding daily on our planet.

One of the stories is about a new study showing that the universe is expanding faster than previously thought. The second one is about another finding substantially proving that the universe is a vast and complex hologram. The third story is relatively minor saying that Saturn’s rings are made of millions of moonlets.

Together the three stories show yet again that humans desperately need a cosmic perspective as a guiding principle. I have lived my life from a cosmic standpoint even though occasionally, and may I say rudely, jolted by mundane hardships like paying one’s bills.

A new study calculates that the universe is expanding at 44.7 miles (71.9 kilometers) per second per megaparsec. One megaparsec is 3.26 million light years. What it means is that if a galaxy 1 megaparsec away is moving away from us at 44.7 miles a second or 71.9 kms a second, then a galaxy 100 megaparsec away is moving away at 100 times faster. The farther away a galaxy, the faster it is moving away. hence a faster expansion of the universe. I am not quite sure what the implications of this expansion are on our daily lives. We are basically just tearing away from each other at the cosmic level, an apt metaphor perhaps for what happens here on earth.

The story about the universe being a hologram is very hard to comprehend because we seem to be living in such a tactile world. Holograms are essentially a 3 dimension projection in a 2 dimension space that should not be touchable. So if the whole universe is a hologram, then should we really care about anything? "Imagine that everything you see, feel and hear in three dimensions (and your perception of time) in fact emanates from a flat two-dimensional field, said Kostas Skenderis, Professor at the University of Southampton in Britain. Yes, imagine that!

A paper in Physical Review Letters says the “projection” is “real” from our human perspective. If that is so, what’s the difference whether it is real or holographic? I have the same question about the idea that the universe is a simulation. If the whole universe is a simulation and we are not coded to escape that simulation, what’s the point of that realization? It has no practical or philosophical value. Even our acquiring the knowledge that this is a damn simulation then has to be simulation.

That brings me to a relatively humdrum third story about Saturn’s rings being made of millions of moonlets that could be as big as a house and 1KM in diameter. Images just released by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft with a resolution of 0.3 miles (550 meters) show these moonlets. They are spectacular images. The image above reminded me of my 1978/79 encounter with the late distinguished planetary scientist and astronomer Dr. Tom Gehrels. He was the Principal Investigator for the Imaging Photoplarimeter for the Pioneer mission.

He was visiting my hometown Ahmedabad’s Physical research Laboratory (PRL) where he was a lifetime fellow. I was about 17 (or 18) and, in retrospect, a fully certifiable astronomy nerd. I fixed up an appointment with Dr. Gehrels on a whim after hearing a lecture by him. I remember telling him that I had a few questions about the Pioneer mission, which predated the Voyager mission and on which he had a key role as the Principal Investigator for the Imaging Photoplarimeter. Of course, I did not know any of this when I sought a meeting with him. For me the the trigger was a fascinating animation that he showed during his lecture about the Pioneer flybys of Saturn. The actual flyby happened only 1979.

If Dr. Gehrels was amused at the sight of a teenager dressed in a shirt tucked inside a trousers with a pair of neatly polished shoes asking for his time, he did not show it. There was not a hint of condescension in his manners. He asked my brother Manoj, another friend Paresh and I to come to the PRL the next day. Although I had Manoj and Paresh with me, I had arrogated to myself the role of the principal interlocutor with Dr. Gehrels. The journalist in me was evidently born earlier than I had the sense to recognize it.

True to his word, Dr. Gehrels was waiting in his PRL office at the appointed time when we reached looking molested by Ahmedabad’s violent summer heat. The air-conditioning in his office was a source of great comfort. Dr. Gehrels inquired about us and what we studied. You have to bear in mind that this was perhaps for the first time in our lives that all three had to converse in English. I took the lead in answering although Manoj was the only one among us who was studying in a school where the medium of instruction was English.

Conscious that I may run out of my limited knowledge of English, I gave what must have felt like a rather abrupt introduction of our lives. I wanted to get on with my questions and I did. The one that I remember the most had to do with the Saturn flyby. I asked Dr. Gehrels why the Pioneer spacecraft would not travel through Saturn’s rings. Was it because they (NASA) feared a collision with the icy particles in the rings?, I asked. He said that was indeed one of the concerns.

Now that I see those moonlets in high resolution it becomes even clearer why spacecraft would not pass through those rings without serious peril.

On a separate note, these three stories do not help resolve any of my larger questions about the universe. If the universe is a hologram on the one hand and it is expanding even faster than previously found on the other, then what do we make of it? I don’t know. I really don’t know. That, I suppose, is the thrill of the universe—not ever knowing fully unlike here on Earth where deluded men of unshakable certitudes run amuck.

To Mohandas Gandhi

Gandhi by MC

“Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi at 20 minutes past five this afternoon. His assassin was a Hindu.”

This pithy, matter-of-fact announcement was heard on the All India Radio (AIR) precisely at six o’clock. The gap of 40 minutes between the actual killing by Nathuram Godse at Birla House and the radio announcement was part of a carefully thought out strategy to avoid potential violence over the identity of the assassin. The AIR director decided to keep up the normal programming even though he had become aware of the assassination soon after it occurred.

Reading these details in the celebrated book ‘Freedom at Midnight’ by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre this morning to mark the 69th anniversary of the assassination, I was transported back to the time. Earlier, Gandhi had stubbornly rejected advice from his personal security guard, Delhi police officer D.W. Mehra to increase police guard and search all visitors.

The books quotes an exchange between Gandhi and Mehra.

“I will never agree” Gandhi said in a sort of half shriek. “Do you search people going into a temple or chapel for prayer.”

“No sir,” Mehra replied, “but there is no one in them who is a target for an assassin’s bullet.”

“Rama is my only protection,” Gandhi retorted. “If he wants to end my life, nobody can save me even if a million of your policemen were posted to guard me. The rulers of of this country have no faith in my nonviolence. They think your police guard will save my life. Well, my protection is Rama, and you will not violate my prayer meeting with your police or stop people coming in. If you do, I will leave Delhi and denounce you as the reason for my leaving.”

Gandhi agreed to let Mehra attend the prayer meeting as an individual everyday and he came armed with a Webley and Scott .38.

However, neither Mehra’s .38 Webley and Scott nor Gandhi’s abiding faith in Ram shielded him as Nathuram Godse pulled out his black Beretta pistol and shot the Mahtma three times at point blank range while pretending to greet him. The day was January 30, 1948 and time 5.20 p.m.

Sir Richard Attenborough’s film ‘Gandhi’ effectively captures the scene whose visualization seemed to match the description in ‘Freedom at Midnight’.

As we observe the day with ever fading interest in the man’s actual work, I would recommend that people read the book again, not as a history book but a compelling reportage of what transpired in the years leading to India’s freedom.

Like millions in India and around the world, I have my own personal connection to Gandhi from many different angles. One of the angles, of course, is my documentary ‘Gandhi’s Song’. As a tribute to the man I have given above a link to the 15th century song ‘Vaishnav Jan To’ by the great poet-philosopher Narsinh Mehta that became his moral compass. (Excuse the plug but one has to do it.)

Laying it on thick on canvas

Still a work in progress--MC

Dear friend, fellow journalist, writer and painter Prakash Bal Joshi once told me, “My only interest now is all things creative. They give me energy. They liberate me.” I know precisely what he means. It is the same with me. While Prakash is an artist of great merit, I am so far hacking it but its liberating impact is irrespective of my merit as a painter.

Yesterday, I took my painting below and began reworking it. The result so far is the one above. It is still a work in progress. I like laying my paint thick just as I like mixing oil, acrylic and pastel. The old painting below was all acrylic and it offered me a base to lay thick some oil paint on. It is amazing what the unpredictable chemistry of mixing paints and mediums and the way light reflects on them can do to a painting. These days I prefer pastels to create a certain kind of light, powdery glow that skies have at particular times.

I can always use regular oil and acrylic paint to achieve a similar effect but pastels make it easier for me. One discovers one’s comfort levels with the mechanical aspects of painting. For instance, I find the closer my hand is to the canvas—as with a pastel stick or a pencil—the better I am able to control the flourish. While using brushes that distance created by the long wooden handles makes movements harder for me even though I can manage with some effort. That has to do with the fact that I am not skilled at brushwork. I have my moments when my brushwork is fluid and loose but those are rather few.

The painting at the top still needs proper forestation where the green patch is as well as effects of flowing water. I will add those as I go along. The mountains have acquired much of their tactile, sculptural feel. In order to accentuate that feel, I made the sky light with pastels.

I don’t know why I am boring you with such detail. You may blame it on my liberated state.

Sir John Hurt, 1940-2017

John Hurt as Winston Smith in ‘1984’

If you don’t remember John Hurt despite having seen him in many of his 200 some films, you are unwittingly playing a great tribute to his artistry. Here was a giant actor who disappeared in so many of his great performances that people find him hard to recall.

Although I have watched quite a few of his movies, including one of his most memorable ‘The Elephant Man’, I remember him by his captivating voice. In particular, his relish-worthy narration for the 2006 movie ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ directed by Tom Tykwer. I have a tangential story about Sir John, who has died today at age 77.

While watching ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ 11 years ago I kept going back to its narrator’s remarkably soothing and yet foreboding voice. I did not know it was John Hurt’s voice until one day I saw a picture of his and for some inexplicable reason told my self that that exceptional voice had to come out of this man. This is notwithstanding that I had watched some of his movies, including ‘The Elephant Man’ earlier. When it turned out to be the case, I felt a measure of exhilaration. I would have been deeply disappointed had the Perfume narrator’s voice belonged to someone else.

Hurt’s filmography is a testament to his extraordinarily eclectic talent as an actor. While going through it on IMDB this morning, it struck me that I have watched quite a few of his films. The one that I remember and I am sure many of his admirers do is as the protagonist Winston Smith in ‘1984’, based on George Orwell’s iconic book about a dystopian big brotherly society where everyone is under surveillance which is enjoying a major resurrection these days. It is a role that was tailor-made for Hurt. There is something about Hurt’s face—not that it resembles Orwell’s but it is reminiscent of it—that fits the character perfectly.

I liked him very much in the 2011 ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ based on the book by John le Carré. He plays Control in the Cold War spy thriller. Once again, Hurt had the bearing of that time or, may be, it was his skills as a great actor that made one feel that.

It is not for me to assess Hurt’s, or for that matter anybody else’s, career. I come to such subjects from the standpoint of how certain aspects of a prominent life connected with me. From that angle, apart from his many memorable performances for me Hurt’s instant recall this morning was his narration for ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’.

It is a great tribute the man’s craft that he made his presence felt in this movie as much as any other character through his voice. When he enunciates the line “His entire ambition was restricted to the fleeting realm of scent”, you can feel that scent fleeting away. The novel by Patrick Suskind needed a narrator’s of Hurt’s brilliance to offer deeper insights into the character of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (an outstanding Ben Whishaw).

Photons rising inside the sun and my morning

Mustard Morning by Mayank Chhaya

I occasionally read random posts from a collection of 3148 posts I have written so far on this blog as of yesterday.  Here is one that I like.

September 19, 2015

People often ask me about things that really thrill me. (No one ever does that but this is my way of opening a post.) One of the things that thrill me is catching early morning sunlight with the realization that the photons in it may have taken tens of thousands of years, if not longer, to rise from the core of the sun before finally managing to escape its surface. The light or the photons that touched me this morning were that old. This knowledge thrills me because it gives such a profound cosmic context to our inane, earthly preoccupations.

Even those who know such things and bother to think about them often mistakenly believe that the light reaching us is eight minutes old because it takes that long for sunlight to travel from there to us. The eight-minute journey is the just the final and the tiniest part of a photon’s destiny. According to NASA, which concerns itself with such things, “Most answers for the age of sunlight come out to be between 10,000 and 170,000 years.” There are some who believe photons could be hundreds of thousands of years old.

A photon born at the core of the sun as a result of the spectacularly violent fusion has to go through an absolutely nightmarish journey zigzagging through various layers and materials at 300,000 kilometers a second (The speed of light). It collides millions of times with charged particles in searing plasma in the process, changing its course all the time. The photons from the sun that touched me this morning could at the very least be 10,000-years-old. The knowledge that the light that reached me this morning left before there was what we now call civilization is strangely exhilarating. The sunrise that we saw this morning  was in the making for thousands of years. If that does not thrill you, then I cannot help you. I am not even going into the fact that there was no sunrise in the real sense. The sun does not rise or set. We see it because of the way the earth rotates around its axis.

All this fits rather well into one of my of favorite ruminations about the absurdity of now. At the cosmic level there is no now as we understand it in our daily, earthly, proximate existence. We are forever communicating our pasts thinking of them as our now.

One way to get around this problem of enormous datedness is to collectively agree that our past is in fact jointly our present and our present will be our joint future. I use “our” in a cosmic and not an earthly sense. All that we can do is together decide that the present is when we see it and not when it might have actually happened in relation to a particular event or an object.

Of course, we can also resign to the fact that there is no real present but perpetual past and there is no real future but nascent present. Moments are taking birth and perishing all the time. Our immediate anthropic present will never reconcile or converge with that of even our nearest planetary neighbor, the moon because of the time lag, albeit miniscule in this particular case.

For all practical purposes it does not really matter that we are never up-to-date about the universe because we have to live with what appears before us.

There are two kinds of present, one that is real present as experienced by the object in question and the other as experienced by those away from it. This time lag exists even on our own planet but it is so small that as human we cannot perceive it.

The trick is to treat the human present as the time we humans experience it even if it may have in reality happened a long time ago, as is the case in the gas cloud-Sagittarius A encounter. It sets off my mind on to another paradox. At the cosmic scale reality is not when it is actually real but when we experience it to be so. Since that is indeed the case, don’t talk to me about what is real. Real is real only for the object in question. For the rest, it is all past masquerading as present.

This thrills me.

Escaping into art before returning to heinous existence

The Bay by MC

This painting titled ‘The Bay’ I did some months ago hangs right behind me. I was conscious of its rich colors when I was doing it but then that realization receded as one got distracted by heinous existential challenges. That changed this morning when I looked at it afresh. There is something about it that reassures me that while my real life may not overcome its heinous existential challenges, my fantasy life is rich with possibilities.

Overlooking a turquoise green bay from a rust shore with slate-grey hills rippling against a turmeric-pink-blue sky feels strangely quieting. I am sure there are many places on the planet which have many or all of these elements coming together as effortlessly as this picture. At this point there is no chance that I will get there, wherever it may be. But the fact that this vision hangs behind my desk and I can walk past it everyday without spending a penny is soothing.

Art is an escape. It untethers its creator from hard existence. This is irrespective of the merit and quality of the picture. For a transient few moments, one is transported to the idyll depicted in the painting before crashing right back to the jagged shore of reality. However, until one crashes back to the jagged shore of reality it is gloriously liberating.

And then the phone rings. The caller ID says it is some fucking collection agency.

FCC’s new boss Ajit Pai and net neutrality

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chief Ajit Pai (Photo: Pai’s Twitter feed)

The appointment of Ajit Pai as President Donald Trump’s new chief of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has revived the debate over the principle of net neutrality, something which he opposes. I know, I know net neutrality sounds crashing bore and it indeed is in many ways unless you get behind what it really means. I have written about this twice before, once on August 15, 2010 and the again on April 24, 2014.

Let me put it in ordinary terms. If you are able to watch a cat humping a horse video (literary exaggeration) with as much ease and speed as you might be able to watch Netflix blockbuster it is because at its heart the worldwide web or the Internet is neutral. There is no intrinsic control on which content should load faster. That in short is net neutrality. The net is neutral to what you might want to watch over something else.

Pai, a Washington lawyer and a Republican member of the FCC, opposes that. Under its former Democratic chairman Tom Wheeler the FCC ensured that Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast or Time-Warner do not impose their own commercially-driven biases on which content is more prominent and served faster. The FCC under Wheeler ensured that the ISPs did not discriminate by blocking and choking content based on what content creators might have paid. It has been a rather strict regulatory regime.

Pai’s appointment as the nation’s chief telecommunications regulator is widely seen by the proponents of net neutrality as an end to net neutrality. I hope it is not as dramatic as that. Going by what Pai has said on Twitter following his appointment appears unexceptionable. However, what remains to be seen is what happens once he gets into the top gear as the FCC boss. There are those who consider him thoughtful and progressive in terms of modernizing the net infrastructure.

“There is so much we can do together to bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans and to promote innovation and investment,” he tweeted.

“From broadband to broadcast, I believe in a 21st-century version of Jefferson's 2nd Inaugural: we are all Republicans, we are all Democrats,” he said in another tweet.

He also posted this:

I am willing to be open-minded about whether the new FCC boss will be open-minded about net neutrality or bring in measures that would make the Internet a commercially dictated enterprise. He is in favor of spreading out broadband across the length and breadth of the country. That is a good thing. What I am curious to see is how, once available, that broadband network ferries around content on it.

Those interested in Pai’s larger vision it can be read here.

In another speech in December last year he said, “In the months to come, we also need to remove outdated and unnecessary regulations. As anyone who has attempted to take a quick spin through Part 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations could tell you, the regulatory underbrush at the FCC is thick. We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation, and job creation.”

It might be useful to check out the earlier two pieces I wrote about this subject.

August 15, 2010

It is obvious that you do use the net. You would not be reading this otherwise. Since you do use the net, the principle of net neutrality, which governs the Internet currently, is of significance to you.

Not a lot of people who use the net understand or care about the principle of net neutrality. However, it is possible to argue that the astounding growth and proliferation of web content in the last decade and a half owes everything to do with this principle.

Let me explain in simple, succinct terms what net neutrality means. It means that all data , regardless of whose data and what kind of data, should have the freedom to move at the same speed. In other words the net user should be able to open The New York Times website, which might serve up between 30 and 40 million pages a day, and this blog, which might serve up 3 to 4 pages a day, with the same speed. If the Internet were a country, then net neutrality would be the most important part of its constitution.

That principle is now coming under a serious challenge in the US and the two players mounting that challenge are giants in their business--Google and Verizon. Telecom companies such as Verizon have maintained that since they are the primary movers of data on the net they should have the option to decide whether I should be able to watch an obscure Mohammed Rafi song called “Mein hun ek khalasi, mera naam hai bheem palasi” on YouTube as easily as someone else should be watch a pay-per-view blockbuster.

On the face of it this may seem like a fair point but once you begin to unravel all the complexities of what will eventually happen without net neutrality you understand net neutrality is important.It is about controlling which content you watch by paying whom and how much.

Google and Verizon want wireless data, the net data that you see on your mobile devices, to remain free from regulation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) so that they can decide what to let open up first. The FCC wants to retain that control to ensure that net neutrality remains even on wireless devices.

It is not clear how this would play out because there has been a tremendous pushback from a large number of people who want net neutrality to remain. So far the Google-Verizon proposal is just a proposal but given their individual and collective clout in America they could begin to turn things around.

April 24, 2014

Life is not neutral. So why should the Internet be? That is certainly one way to look at the question of net neutrality. However, a more mature way to look at the debate would be to say that precisely because life is not neutral, the Internet ought to be. Trust me to turn everything into a larger philosophical discussion. There was no need bring in life into the current debate over net neutrality.

With both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reporting that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) might be getting ready with new rules that effectively end net neutrality as we know it, the debate has revived. For those of you who may not keep up with such subjects, net neutrality ensures that you as a consumer get to access whatever content you like without your service provider meddling in how fast you can get to it. So far FCC rules generally do not allow Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast or Verizon to offer a faster or preferential access to content creators who are willing to pay more. In other words, theoretically you should be able to get to this stupid little blog with as much ease as you might the Times or the Journal. That could change if the reporting by that very Times and Journal is any indication.

Net neutrality, which means ISPs cannot discriminate where you get faster because some content creator has paid them more money, is seen as the fundamental reason for such an explosive growth of creativity and freedom on the Internet. With the potential new FCC rules, it could mean that the moneybags may be able to muscle the no-moneybags out. Stratification on the basis of what a consumer pays is the norm in many industries. A lot of us have experienced the distinction being a cattle class air traveler, which I am, and business class or first class traveler, which I never will be. But at least in air travel, while the trimmings and comfort level may be decidedly superior in the first or business class to the economy, the plane’s speed remains the same for everyone. It is not as if the first class passengers get faster to Singapore, followed by the business class and finally, if at all, the coach passengers. There is no discrimination or distinction on who reaches faster. Of course, there is  distinction on who deplanes faster—the first class, the business class and then the wretched like you and I. So there is staggered discrimination in many industries.

If net neutrality rules change, from the way I understand there is a theoretical possibility that bandwidth-heavy content providers such as Netflix or Google or Amazon and so on could strike deals with ISPs such as Comcast whereby they get preferential access for a higher fee. That higher fee will naturally be transferred to you and I. Where it differs from the airline example is that the speeds of access and the ease of access could be different for different people. Ardent advocates of net neutrality argue that all net traffic should be treated equally. Period. The new rules could make that more conditional.

News reports suggest that the FCC would require that while ISPs can create a preferential pipeline, they cannot block or slow down access or loading of websites that do not pay ISPs a higher fee. I am curious to see how this form of institutionalized discrimination is achieved. It sounds like the airline model to me. ISPs are already offering different speeds for different fees. Why not keep a net neutral majority landscape where all sites, including the preferred ones can be accessed with equal but comparatively slow speed, and then also offer a faster, more preferred landscape for a higher fee? Add an extra layer on top of the existing net neutral landscape as it exists today. I don’t know if this makes any sense but to me it does.

Net neutrality does not sound like a matter of life and death for most of the humanity right now. However as broadband becomes more widespread, the humanity will begin to experience discrimination in one more sphere of life. So life may not be neutral but it ought to be in some places at least.

Shashi Tharoor and prospects of becoming prime minister

Congress Party Member of Parliament and author Shashi Tharoor

It might be foolish to speculate whether international diplomat turned politician and an important author to boot Shashi Tharoor has any clear path to becoming India’s prime minister. However, it is certainly entertaining to do so with some measure of probability thrown into the mix. Remember you read it here first no matter how absurd it sounds.

That at this stage Tharoor has no recognizable path to the highest political office from within the Congress Party is obvious; so obvious that it needs no stating. However, if by some seismic twist a path does indeed open up, I think one of the defining factors that would propel him is his current favorite cause about how the heartless and predatory British colonial rule so thoroughly debased India for 200 years. His much-celebrated book ‘An Era of Darkness—The British Empire in India’ has won Tharoor strong political credentials beyond his Congress Party and well into the quasi nationalistic territory that is essential for any Indian politician now to make an impact.

The book has created a powerful aura around him as a politician whose nationalist heart is at once genuine and yet without cheap, fact-free jingoism. He lays out his case with meticulous research going by whatever excerpts I have read so far as well as his much-viewed Oxford Union debate video, the original source of the book. He marshals with remarkable persuasiveness and cogency his facts related to how the colonial rule was necessarily and essentially cruel and meant to aggrandize Britain’s elites on the broken backs of millions of impoverished Indians. That there has not been a serious counter from the British side yet is rather intriguing. Could it be because there can be no real counter-argument against the case that Tharoor has presented other than being a dick about it?

Tharoor has been that rare Congress leader who has found some grudging acceptance and even respect even among those swore to the infallibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. That is a political plus for him. The issue of the quintessential cruelty of the British empire still has deep emotional resonance in India across party and ideological lines. Anyone championing that cause with the scholastic soundness and yet popular appeal with which Tharoor appears to have done is bound to enjoy some political capital.

Of course, it is speculative whether one remarkable book so powerfully debunking the myth of the fundamental benignity of the empire is sufficient propulsion for its author to fly over all the formidable barriers within and outside his political realm. Stranger things have happened in politics and it is not altogether outlandish that Tharoor has at least a theoretical chance to secretly covet the high office. It is not for me to say whether the thought has crossed his mind although for someone who nearly became the secretary-general of the United Nations he may not be altogether averse to pondering the prospects of occupying 7, Race Course Road one day.

Until then it would be useful for him to persist on the judicious path that he is on now where he manages to rile the right-wing forces just the right amount without fully losing a vast swath of Indians who harbor sympathies for it.

It is necessary to point out that I have no stake in this one way or the other. This is merely a bystander journalist’s idle speculation.

A new keyboard with alt-facts buttons

In recognition of the new world order I have invented a new keyboard that offers me a short cut to alternative facts or alt  facts. The two new buttons have been designed by me in such a way that every time I encounter an objective fact, I press alt-facts and the computer gives me an alternative fact. It will save me so much time as a journalist.

Apart from the ability to find an alt-facts version of every objective fact, the two buttons are also equipped to convert an entire article into the alt-facts version. The way it works is that you write a news story like a normal, sane journalist respectful of facts as they are rather than the way one wants them to be and then press alt-facts together and boom, you have the version tailored for the current climate.

I have applied for a US patent on the new keyboard (not true) and plan to build a multi-billion dollar business out of it (delusion).

As an aside, in keeping with the new reality, on my next visit to Washington I intend staying at the Trump International Hotel. At the check-in counter when they tell me what the room tariff is I intend to quickly convert it into alt-facts number. For instance, if they say the tariff is $400 a night, I will say alt-facts gives it $75.

A very short essay about a young man conceived on Earth but born on Mars

I re-republish the following as the movie ‘The Space Between Us’ prepares for release on February 3. The reason for doing so will become clear quickly. I first referred to it on May 26, 2016.

May 26, 2016

On November 9, 2014 I floated a germ of a sci-fi fantasy about a female astronaut who discovers she is pregnant two days before going to Mars. She hides it from the space administration and manages to embark on the nearly nine-month long journey. You can read the first teaser below which I am republishing.

The provocation for republishing is the trailer of an upcoming movie called “The Space Between Us” that I just saw this morning. I was thrown off a bit by its plot. Here is what part of the plot summary says on the movie’s website.

“In this interplanetary adventure, a space shuttle embarks on the first mission to colonize Mars, only to discover after takeoff that one of the astronauts is pregnant. Shortly after landing, she dies from complications while giving birth to the first human born on the red planet – never revealing who the father is.”

Here is what I wrote one and half years ago. (Now it is over two years ago.)

November 9, 2014

My mother discovered that she was pregnant with me just two days before the liftoff.

She hid the news from the space administration which would have most certainly withdrawn her from the nearly nine-month-long, one way trip to Mars.

My mother and I landed on Mars on January 4, 2030. She was part of the first peopled mission to this planet. I was born two days later inside a special enclosure set up not too far from the site where the Curiosity rover first landed in August, 2012.

I have no memory of her since she died moments after giving me birth. Both her fellow astronauts have also died since, one in 2035 and the other in 2038. They shared many stories and memories of my mother before they died. That means I have been on my own, presumably entirely alone on Mars, for close to ten Earth years.

It was a recklessly ambitious and selfish decision which I approve now that I am 18 in Earth years, albeit just 10 in Martian years. Although on Mars I am just 10, my brain is that of an 18-year-old earthling as it would have been back on my mother’s planet. Of course, I consider myself a Martian. I cannot quite explain how but I have evolved to live on carbon dioxide. It is an acquired taste.

I lived the first eight years of my life confined inside the enclosure, the first five with both the astronauts and the other three with one of them. They never took me out because they feared for my life. Then one day in June 2038, which I remember rather vividly, the lone surviving astronaut, who knew he was dying, took me to the Curiosity rover.

The rover was still functional, over a quarter century after it arrived, but not of much scientific value since there was already a human settlement in the form of our enclosure.

I remember the astronaut and I stood in front of Curiosity with our backs facing it. He shot a short video and transmitted it back to the space administration. He later told me that Earth was agog with the news of the presence of a child, me, on Mars.

That my mother was pregnant when she traveled came to be known only then.

Three months later, the second astronaut died while on an exploration. The first one had died inside the enclosure and I think the second astronaut managed to perform some sort of a burial. I do occasionally see the second astronaut’s skeletal face inside his still largely intact spacesuit sticking out of the rover hatch.

There are times when I feel I should bury the second astronaut but then keeping him the way he died gives me the illusion of some presence on Mars other than me.

The space administration does communicate with me regularly. They cannot believe that I roam around the enclosure with no spacesuit and breathing aid. They also cannot believe that I neither eat food nor drink water. As far as I can tell, I have never eaten or drunk anything since I was born.

One of the space administration’s main concerns is to find out if there is life on Mars which is ironic because they are asking me, a Martian who breathes carbon dioxide but eats and drinks nothing. How much more bizarre life are they really looking for?

In one of my video calls with the mission control I had asked them that very question. One of the scientists replied, “Yeah but you were conceived on Earth. So strictly speaking you are not a Martian.”

I tried reasoning with him that I may have been conceived on Earth but spent my entire in vivo formative period on a flight to Mars buffeted by radiation, then landed on the Red Planet violently shaking inside my mother’s amniotic sac and was born two days later even as she died. That had no impact on the scientists looking for a truly indigenous Martian life.

Lately, I have started to ignore calls from Earth as well as disregard their urgent video messages. Once in a while, I do visit Curiosity and stand in front of its billion megapixel camera and give the space administration the finger or, at any rate, what would have been the finger had I developed like normal a human being.

Curiosity is my only friend because like me it came to Mars without its consent and was made to stay on without its consent. I would very much like to bring it back near the enclosure but I do not know how to navigate it. Even if I did, I do not have the driver’s license yet. Mars has no DMV as of now unless I set it up and give myself a license.

Mayank Chhaya’s note: Some day I plan to make this into a full-fledged novel. Consider this post its own copyright.

It is undeniable that there are clear similarities in the plot at the takeoff stage both in terms of a female astronaut’s pregnancy and her death soon after the central character was born on Mars. “The Space Between Us” then makes it a different sort of human adventure by having the boy return to Earth to explore. In my story, which has since moved forward quite a bit, the boy initially remains on Mars but as he grows older he does wonder about Earth which he has never seen. For me who the boy’s father is not an important question in a civilization that has colonized Mars. That’s rather trivial.

A thought has crossed my mind whether I should do anything to point out to the makers of the movie the plot similarities. This is particularly because I said at the end of the original post, “Some day I plan to make this into a full-fledged novel. Consider this post its own copyright.”