#TheDailyToast: Moving to Mars

It is already yesterday’s news that NASA found current day, briny, liquid water on Mars. Of course NASA, unlike our very own ISRO Mars Orbiter, which finally put out a pdf the size of Mars itself of its images after a year in space, took two weeks to dodge speculation on the big news, and tweet information and field questions on social media.

Still have questions about our #MarsAnnouncement? Join our Reddit AMA @ 2pm ET to get answers https://t.co/fW9oKyd4bR pic.twitter.com/4XGVsR5vD4

— NASA (@NASA) September 28, 2015

In the Indian eventuality of finding water, or life on Mars, the plan was to wait for it to grow, reproduce, evolve, invent fire, tools, a means to communicate with the orbiter, and respond to said question. ISRO has not yet reached the conclusion that an excited and curious Indian public may have questions. This inability of Indian elders to field questions without asking either: "who are you to question me?" or "do you know who I am?" or even "whose son-in-law do you take me for?" alternately, simply flinging a well-aimed book at your head in response, is what is known as scientific temper. It is a one way ticket to Mars, truly, or ought to be.

So even as NASA is busy trying to extract oxygen from dirt, technology that has been in evolution since we started to make the atmosphere of the earth so particle heavy that even the US and China have finally shaken hands on something, India’s newfound selfie-obsession is doing wheelies in orbit for the express purpose of studying stars.

We're working on ways to make oxygen on Mars – for rocket fuel & for breathing. How? By using dirt. #JourneyToMars https://t.co/0ObNXuLoVQ

— NASA (@NASA) September 29, 2015

Which is great, no doubt, except NASA is already speaking farming, colonisation and relocation. This is the equivalent of North America talking better education to compete with the "oversmart Asians" but doing so little of anything about it (namely, cracking a sum in school, how about that hunh?) that they may as well quit school to join the protests about the takeover of American jobs anyway. Or, closer to home, Google and Facebook may wifi-ready railway stations for us, which is like oooh, so fancy, look at me checking my mail at Ratlam Junction, make a film about that why don’t you Imtiaz Ali, how would we have Jab We Met then.... hunh?... but what would have been even nicer was wifi in schools... you know, for when we actually have classrooms. Or toilets. Or teachers.... but let’s not get pessimistic about the future. We got to Mars, or at least, in the neighbourhood, didn’t we?

So, let’s build on our strengths. Jugaad, clearly, gets us anywhere. While NASA may still be extracting oxygen, water, and food from dirt, Indian stomachs are quite used to eating it. NASA may be trying to desalinate crystals to make water palatable, but desalination shmalination.... if Indians can just go ahead and drink cow urine, just hand me a cup of that Mars water. Our ancient ancestors, the ones who invented Vedic science, knew that we would require the hardiness of intestinal lining, to make this journey of thee future. As for farming, we are quite used to drought prone conditions anyway, and we can pretty much genetically modify and sprout anything anywhere given half a chance. As for the small matter that NASA got there first? Who are you kidding, we are land grab experts if nothing else, that’s Indian territory now. Build a gaushala, discover an ancient temple on it, plant a flag and call it disputed territory. You wanna take me on? I’ll see you in court NASA, this could go on for years.Aaand.. we’re on Mars already. Orbiter-Shmorbiter...