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Back to the future
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How men of yesteryear tried to forecast their future, our past...
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Carl Sagan once said that man could never even have a faint idea of future beyond a period of 10 years.
Stunned?
Well, just browse the vintage illustrated weeklies heaped on those dust-ridden shelves of the Sree Chithira Tirunal Library, and you would see writers of yesteryear trying, in vain, to forecast their future -- our past.
It is difficult to resist that diabolic smile as we go through these predictions, word by word. We can smirk at every calculation that went wrong in the past. But there is also a sinister message hidden in these passages of yore. Reading them, we are constantly reminded of the amorphous, erratic and unpredictable nature of our own future.
Take out one of those worn out Hindu Illustrated weeklies (dated May 3, 1936) from the dilapidated shelf. There is an article, `Can we reach the Moon', by astronomer Henry St John Playe, which voices the scientific concern of the 1930s about the feasibility of travelling to the silver orb. The writer cautions the scientific world about the problems involved in such a voyage - "The moon vehicle would have to venture through interplanetary space crowded with rogue rocks, which could dash the rocket into pieces". Playe envisages the use of radium as fuel (It is going to be kerosene and liquid oxygen). Finally, Playe refers to the conclusions of Prof Guthnich, renowned astro-scientist who believes that "it (the voyage to the moon) is never likely to be undertaken, since the expense involved would be absolutely prodigious".
More than three decades have gone by since that day when man landed on moon, but the writer's concerns are still relevant. Many believe that NASA had indeed mooned America and the world.
In another article, `Will Everest succumb' (The Hindu Illustrated weekly, June 23 1935), H. Harvey Day realistically portrays the "not-so-modest" ambition of the mountaineer -- the Everest. He penned the article as a curtain-raiser for the mountaineering expedition undertaken by Hugh Ruttledge, "that gallant gentleman". The writer is so confident that "one of the few remaining spots that have held out so long against the advance of man is now on the point of surrender." Harvey Day observes, "No finer, more experienced or more inspiring leader could have been chosen, and there is more than a possibility that at last `Jomo Kang-Kah' will succumb to the science of the foreign devil. The pity of it." No Nostradamus we are, but the advantage of our times tells us where we should take such "pity" on. It took another 20 for the Everest to bow its head but not just to the science of the foreign devil but also to the art of a Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay.
It is not just the relationship between Man and Nature that fuelled the intuitive pen of the writer.
Flashback to the times when Germany was deprived of its right to maintain an air force after World War I. It naturally instigated the patriotic spirits of Hans Helbig, head of the Glider section of the German Aeroplane Association, whose ideas of a better aviation future spilled into the pages of The Hindu Illustrated Weekly, September 20, 1931. He says that the imposed restriction of using aeroplanes is not going to take its toll as long as gliders are here, "which will undoubtedly assume considerable importance in the near future". Helbig reasons, "The dream of the winged man is now made possible by glider, not aeroplane, since in the latter it is the machine that flies not the man".
The writer is so elated that he assigns this mode of travel for the future -- "the method of aerial travel may easily become the method of the future. Just as a railway train, the aerial vehicle of the future will only consist of one high powered aeroplane and several gliders connected with it by ropes".
Imagine such aerial trains burring over against the blue sky. It would be a real treat.
The glider, according to Hans Helbig, avoids the jerky raise of an aeroplane and also the fuel mishaps connected with air travel. As long as you go by the printed word ("When danger sets in, cut the rope and escape"), nothing would go wrong. The compartments will land smoothly even without a help from the engine. Futuristic indeed!
The hype and hoopla associated with the advent of the new millennium was on even during the thirties, if some writers of the decade are to be believed. This time, it is none other than the great architect, Le Corbusier, who dreams about the city of 2000 AD in the article `Licensed Citizens in 2000 AD' (The Hindu Illustrated Weekly, May14, 1933).
Kudos to the great designer of Chandigarh, for he foresees that the inflow of "incompetent mental workers" who drift to the town because of its "insidious appeal", would cease. And here's more. "The solar day of twenty four hours will be utilised far more profitably and happily. Thanks to machinism (!), men will no longer need to work eight hours a day. And how will this leisure be employed? In rest and recreation. There will be playing fields near every building block. Every house and every room will be sound proof," he says. Less than eight hours a day! Don't let the guy working in Technopark hear this out.
Let's come home to God's own country.
P. B. K. Menon's article, `Aikya Kerala'-- the land of promise', published in the Orient Illustrated Weekly, July 20, 1947, conducts the heat of the period as our State was about to be carved out from a mess. His suggestions are concerned with the formation of the State of Kerala, `Malayala-kara'. Menon says that the proposed united Kerala extends from Cape Comorin to Goa, and thus spreads over the native states of Travancore and Cochin, and includes British Malabar, Nilgiris, Coorg, Tullunad and south Kanara. He reasons, "they were all under one union from pre-historic times and they had together grown up within the same cultural influences and traditional bonds". He elaborates on the common factors that run through the cultural veins of all these places and concludes optimistically that if placed under a single roof "Kerala people can all stand up together as a well-knit political unit and merrily jog on from prosperity to prosperity".
What would Menon say if he sees his land of promise now, abridged geographically into a pocket edition?
MANU REMAKANT
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