The car window winds down and new age author Paolo
Coelho asks for directions to the expressway. “Here, have
these maps,” I reply, handing him a folded piece of paper
with “Follow Your Dream”on it.
Okay, that hasn’t happened yet, but scientists say we live
in an infinite multiverse which means that it is statisti-
cally guaranteed to happen somewhere at some point.
It worries me that so many young writers and filmmakers
I meet think “Follow Your Dream” is the most profound
idea ever. My question is: Which dream? The one where
I’m chained naked to Goofy at a Disneyland parade? The
one where Kylo Ren is fondling his light sabre and look-
ing at me in a creepy manner? Or one of the disturbing
ones?
A colleague offered advice. “I think they mean follow
your daydream, not the weird dreams you have at night,
thanks to your strange eating habits,” he said, as if other
people didn’t eat late-night basins of mac ‘n’ cheese with
jalapeno chillis.
Following my daydreams makes it worse. How do I ar-
range for Taylor Swift and Emma Watson to fight over
me? Or have a group of novitiate nuns chase me with tick-
ling sticks? The phrase needs a disclaimer: “Follow your
dream unless it’s kind of obvious that you shouldn’t.”
Ambition can be a bad thing. In my crime reporter days,
I recall a one-legged petty thief in Indonesia who decided
to follow his dream by graduating to bag-snatching. He
was quickly caught by police who said he’d made a poor
career choice.
It strikes me that what many people really mean by the
phrase is that they want to be famous. To achieve this,
forget your dream and just have a startlingly original
idea. Here’s evidence for that from the news media.
Ketan Kumar, 24, stole a train for his girlfriend. He
thought she would be impressed with a gift, the news-
papers reported. She wasn’t, and nor were the police.
Ketan, buddy, you need to think about how girls work.
Big, ugly steaming lump of metal? Perfect for guys. For
girls, think romance and fancy dinners.
Ketan did get into the press but ideally one should find
an idea that is eyebrow-raising enough to get media at-
tention without getting you locked up.
A good example is the pair of student scientists in In-
donesia who created a dung-flavored air freshener. They
collected cow poop, fermented it for several days to max-
imize the, er, fragrance, and then found a way to put it
into a handy spray-top container. The result was instant
news media fame. Personally, cow poop is not my top
choice for house fragrances, but others disagree.
Karuna Menon, a reader with Indian and Malaysian
roots, remarked: “The smell of cow dung reminds me of
summer vacations, playing with cousins, gulmohar flow-
ers, and reading novels in the court yard under the shade
of a mango tree.”
It takes all sorts, Karuna. The comments put me in the
mood for a relaxing day dreamy doze. I close my eyes
and Taylor and Emma approach, looking daggers at each
other and growling.
(Nury Vittachi is an Asia-based frequent traveler. Send
ideas and comments via his Facebook page)
India launches 20 satellites at one go! Jai Ho
Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh), India successfully put
into orbit its own Cartosat earth observation satellite
and 19 other satellites, including one belonging to the
Google company Terra Bella.
With this India successfully completed yet another
multiple satellite launch in a single rocket mission.
It was the first time that ISRO launched 20 satellites
with one rocket.
In 2008, the ISRO had launched 10 satellites with the
PSLV rocket.
With the success of June’s rocket mission, India has
successfully launched 74 satellites for international
customers.
ISRO scientists received a deluge of congratulatory
messages from different leaders following the suc-
cessful launch.
“The fact that of the 20, 17 satellites belonged to for-
eign vendors, including that from the US and Google,
speaks volumes about the leaps in progression that
ISRO has taken since its inception in 1960s.
The entire mission was over in around 26 minutes.
According to ISRO, the 110 kg SkySat Gen2-1 belong-
ing to Terra Bella, a Google company, is a small earth
imaging satellite capable of capturing sub-metre res-
olution imagery and high definition video.
The Planet Lab’s Dove Satellites are also earth imag-
ing satellites. A total of 12 Dove satellites each weigh-
ing 4.7 kg were carried in this mission inside three
QuadPack dispensers, ISRO said.
“We are in discussions with Planet Labs and oth-
er companies for the launch of their satellites,”
S. Rakesh, Director, ISRO Propulsion Centre and
Chairman-cum- Managing Director of Antrix Corpo-
ration told reporters here after the launch.
Soon after the Cartosat was put into orbit its two so-
lar arrays were deployed automatically and ISRO’s
Telemetry,
Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Ben-
galuru took over the control of the satellite.
In the coming days, the satellite will be brought to
its final operational configuration following which it
will begin to provide remote sensing services using
its panchromatic (black and white) and multispectral
(colour) cameras.
With the earth observation satellites going down in
size globally, the ISRO has been reducing the size of
its earth observation satellites, ISRO Chairman Ku-
mar said.
Currently, there are 34 satellites in orbit comprising
communication, earth observation, navigation and
space science satellites.
Asked about the need for a third launch pad to in-
crease the launch frequency, Kumar said the space
agency is building a new vehicle/rocket assembly
building that would speed up the assembling of rock-
ets. “Once the existing bottlenecks are removed and
if there is a need for new facilities we will go for that,”
Kumar added.
According to him, the next PSLV rocket will put into
orbit a weather monitoring and forecasting satellite
Scatsat.
On India’s plans to have a space station of its own,
Kumar said it depends on the long term plan of ISRO,
the funding received from the government and other
aspects.
THE FUNNY SIDE
Why some of us should never follow our
dreams
By Nury Vittachi
By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS
PAGE- 20 July 2016
WWW
.azindiatimes.com
