The Malayali on the Moon: Redux

In August of 2023, I had finally made my way to a place on my bucket list - Machu Picchu, and it was glorious. Sometime in the middle of the clambering, kisses from alpacas (I, too, am a herd animal) and limitless Pisco Sours on my way back to Cusco, I checked my email and I suddenly had gotten a few of emails from Wordpress alerting me of views.

"Huh?", I thought to myself from opening one saying I had a comment. I was not left much more enlightened by the contents of said email.

So on the train back to Cusco, I finally put it all together.

And it started with Chandrayaan 3, which had put itself into lunar orbit earlier that month amidst social media posts. Some chest thumping had ensued - a lot of "India is reclaiming its Pushpak Vimana tradition" and pictures of women scientists hugging each other in Mission Control.

In the middle of this, strode Prakash Raj like an almighty colossus, making the most achan of jokes.

Predictable backlash ensued. A wave of social media warriors jumped on asking how dare this actor - who is an atheist, Muslim or Christian - impugn the name of country, ISRO and the Leader in no special order by making a very bad joke (granted) on his Twitter. Many news articles were written.

Truly simpler times.

Mr. Raj (can I call you Mr. Raj?) was clearly on his A troll game, taunting the people responding to his tweets, bringing the hot tea (sorry) to everyone, talking to the million news outlets and throwing hashtags to the foaming-at-the-mouth masses.

Then, he presumably went to Google to search his justification for the chayakada tweet. And found my post about how Neil Armstrong met a chayakadakaaran when he first landed on the moon.

Mr. Raj was still being heckled from the sidelines. I wasn't clear who was having the last laugh, but this was one of those cases where even if you won, you really lost.

Nearly three years after my metaphorical deer in headlight moment (I made most of my remaining social media private afterwards), all I have left for that brief moment is the following graph:

As for the joke, I think the video below captures it better than the ellipses ridden, very excitable blog by the teen me.