I once read somewhere that science doesn’t say “Yes”; it only says “No” or “Maybe”. And regarding the question of whether or not India will touch the moon, science didn’t say “No”. You wake up, get ready, walk to the library, but couldn’t get inside for some reason. That doesn’t mean you didn’t go to the library. You just didn’t get to go inside. It took effort on your behalf to try and get into the library from the comfort of your home, and it would be sheer stupidity to refuse to acknowledge that effort.

There is a lot of stuff going on all over the country right now. The ongoing tensions in Kashmir, the problems with the NRC in Assam, the flooding in some of the southern states, the fears of an economic slowdown, and many other things. But despite all that, the country came together, all day and the whole night, to witness what was another reason to feel proud of our country. And from the reactions we’ve witnessed so far, we stand proud nonetheless. Like I said, it would be sheer stupidity to refuse to acknowledge the effort, and right now, like so many other times, we Indians chose better than being stupid. And not just Indians for that matter. People from all over the world are feeling compassionate for this humongous effort.

Of course, like every instance, our neighbours from Pakistan are trying to find something negative in all this, just to be able to stroke their falsified ego. As of right now, 1 in every 11 tweets about Chandrayaan 2 is from Pakistan, about how we failed. Honestly, I think that we simply can’t afford to look at those poorly-crafted hollow insults. We are too good for that. If we stop being productive and start looking over what other people have to say about us, how are we any different from those insecure narcissists who call themselves Pakistanis?

In August 1979, our first attempt to launch a satellite at home failed. Just a little over 40 years from then, we’ve launched more than 100 of our own satellites and sent almost 270 foreign satellites to space. We’ve also sent a probe to the Moon, and an orbiter to Mars. The sun is our next target, apart from another lander-rover with Chandrayaan 3, and a lander-rover for Mars with Mangalyaan 2; not to forget we are also working on an orbiter for Venus named Shukrayaan. Apart from all these aspirations, we are also working rigorously on sending Indians into space, all on our own. Because that’s what we do. That’s what we’ve always done. Our country’s history in science is almost as rich as our culture, if not more. And so is our love. Because nothing says India like hundreds of thousands of people laying awake in the dead of the night, waiting for a metallic device to touch down on the beacon of the dark. Not just any metallic device, as a matter of fact. A metallic device with OUR name on it.

In all our endeavours of space, we’ve faced failure 7 times. Those failures have now become nothing but footnotes in the story of success we’ve been writing. You wanna know how I know that? Well, people can’t recall the other 6 times we failed, but they will tell you how we launched 104 satellites in space at once, and they will tell you how we sent an orbiter to Mars in a budget less than most big-studio movies. That’s one of the best things about us. No matter what happens, we are always willing to remember the good things over bad ones.

Things went sideways in the final stages, and that’s okay. At least we know that most of what we did was correct. If more proof of success is needed, then let me tell you that the orbiter from Chandrayaan 2 is working just as intended. All in all, it would be inappropriate to call this mission a failure. A better term would be semi-successful.

They say the sky is the limit. That’s not true. Sky was never the limit. We’ve always been darn sure of that. As sad as this incident feels right now, soon it will become a sweet memory of how we came together to support our scientists, something that doesn’t happen very often. With our love and support, they will try again, and they will touch the moon. Soon. And then, Chanda Mama won’t be that far anymore.