July 20th, 1969 >39 years ago

We were a little late to school that day. I used to take ages to eat and mom’s insistence that I eat the entire heap of rice and curry before we took the 1130 KBS bus from Koduvayur to Palakkad, was sure to make us miss the bus. My brother had already finished his food and was waiting for me to finish. After that was done, we would pick up out aluminum school cases (you don’t even see them today – cases that effectively shut out the rain and held our books safely!) and rush up the street to the side of the TSM Beedi making shop in the middle of Koduvayur town, a location which also served as the bus stop.

The street was full of activity when we got there, as a retail market place where carts and lorries from various other smaller towns had congregated to collect their quotas of commodities. Tamil and Malayalam were freely used, with a smatter of the special ‘rowther’ brand Malayalam from the Muslims left behind by the Tippu’s horse brigades. They were traders now, I guess. If you craned your neck you could see the butcher at work on the hanging carcass, stripping the goat’s skin and you could see the chettiar’s & mannadiar’s busy at their shops. Large bags of red chillies, coriander, vegetables, rice,, pulses and the such were off loaded and reloaded, the air was dense with all the acrid dust and smells, but as bright eyed enthusiastic kids, we enjoyed watching it all for those few minutes till the bus screeched to a stop. Wow! The powerful sound of the airbrake amidst all the noise of the bazaar when applied by KBS driver Balan made us feel that we should all become bus drivers when we grew up.

I loved life in those days, after years of loneliness as a kid growing up in Calicut, I was now back with my family – dad, mom, sister and brothers. Dad had to leave the estates and move to warmer environs after a couple of heart attacks. It was simply great, enjoying life with my brother, and dad used to teach us cricket – ex Presidency college cricket player and all that. As my dad was a doctor, the house was always full of people, especially the clinic portion out in front. Koduvayur was a bustling little town and there were only a couple of doctors, so the patients were a good number trooping in and out at all hours.

Soon we were admitted to the Motilal School in Palakkad, opposite the famous Victoria College. And my brother and I would bus it back & forth every day, middle school was conducted in an afternoon shift. What days they were, how we learned smoking ‘cool’ mentholated cigarettes, and chewing paan (read an earlier blog on Paan). Anyway on that fateful day, we reached school a few minutes early, teamed up with some friends and ate a Paan in ‘shtyle’ from the shop across the road and trudged back to school, but that day the teacher had enough. We got into class a few minutes late and she spotted the red tinged lips and tongues of the little ruffians. Immediately we were hauled to the headmistress’s office.

As we waited, the school sound system was blaring out the VOA radio commentary. Can you guess what it was? Armstrong’s landing on the moon.

Everybody was beaming; a man had landed on the moon. I had only a vague understanding of what space and spaceships were all about then, but the bigger issue was clear - we had people going to the moon. My mind took flight; I listened to the English words, understanding bits and pieces of the American accent. We did know a little about America, from Geography and the big Sears catalog (read an earlier blog on the sears catalog) that my uncle had once brought back from his travails. And I thought, I will go there one day…

The day was July 20, 1969 – A day when Armstrong landed on the moon and said ‘One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind’, kindling my interest in flight and space. We read about it, and we saw grainy newsreels much later in movie theaters.

It was when the peon pulled us both into the headmistress’s office that reality hit us, and hit us hard…maan, we were in deep trouble, hauled in front of the headmistress. She was very abrupt. She simply said, bring one of your guardians tomorrow and we will discuss this further.

With great trepidation, we got back home with heads hung low. Mom and dad were furious, but dad would not scold us since he himself loved paan and had given us bits now & then. My aunt who was around, offered to meet the headmistress as they were old school mates or something. Thus ended that fateful day for us but an important day for mankind.

In any case, the following day went by not too badly for us; we were given a final warning & lightly punished.

While the world and America rejoiced, some Saudi preachers were denouncing all this as a cheap Hollywood trick, so much so that to this day many think that the moon landing was a hoax. And there are a lot out there who try to prove it, like this site. It does provide compulsive reading, if you glance through them. But this other site provides some explanations, which I should point out are also not very convincing. Conspiracy theorists will of course continue their work & studies….

Anyway India is planning a manned trip in 2020, to the moon (following unmanned missions), and hopefully that will be televised from start to finish. A Chinese trip might precede it, but it won’t be televised in real time, for sure. Until then, we will continue to believe in Armstrong’s & Aldrin’s legacy.

BTW – some trivia – Armstrong actually said “a small step for ‘a’ man (meaning himself)…...” The ‘a’ was dropped out in official transcripts as it was quite inaudible due to heavy static. I heard he was pretty miffed about it!!

A good account of the event is linked here.

Listen to a lovely song titled ‘Armstrong’, if any of you like Lobo - Kent Lavoie, the singer…