A SMALL STEP FOR MAN
J uly 20, 1969. I was a 11-year-old boy. I remember that rainy day. Our school had just started, and, suddenly, there was this announcement: “The schools, nationwide, will remain closed for a day!” And, the reason? “Man has just landed on the Moon!” What a feeling that was! Thousands of miles away from America, there, in one of the remotest villages of Southern India, we were asked to celebrate the historic moment – of Man’s first step on the Moon! It was not the feat of America or Neil Armstrong; but, it was ‘Man’s’ feat, mind you! Exactly fifty years later, on this July 22, when our own nation sent the unmanned rocket to the Moon, it’s a rainy day, too, here in Mumbai. Like my fellow citizens, I, too, was feeling proud of our nation’s feat… Not a small feat for a nation burdened with its multiple problems… Imagine the feeling: If Chandrayaan-2 successfully lands on the Moon, we will be only the fourth nation to accompl...