See-saw, hurry up and down (48)

Where was the need for such a detailed blog post on what Antara thought of space missions? 

Indians felt that apart from episodes of instability, there was always an effort to shape people's thoughts in a certain way, to introduce new ideas and ways of looking at things. It was permissible in a democracy, but people should also know how Antara felt about things. 

Given the Big Red One's privatising zeal, there was no reason to hold the democracy if people's minds, say, were captive to a private lunar mission company from the US. 

As understood and accepted everywhere, the crisis therefore began when Antara joined HT in 2010, not when she was humiliated and forced to leave in 2012. Antara's previous workplace had become unbearable, everyone got annual promotions and hefty raises, only she seemed to be debarred from those. When you were rejected three years in succession, you ought to look for alternative employment and leave. That's when she joined HT.

The Big Red One interpreted Antara's move to HT in terms of Austria. "Austrians cannot play except in the big league." 

Immediately, calls went from Big Red One's lackeys to Jamshedpur. "This shouldn't have happened," Jamshedpur honcho replied. "Every single one of Antara's relatives, both on her father's side and mother's side, were under the care of Tata Football Academy, since 1987 (also the year the London-based PR firm was set up.) She was meant to be isolated her entire life, till her last day. What Austria, what big league?'

It could only imply the US Navy, as far as Jamshedpur honcho and the Big Red One was concerned. The Navy still held aspirations for the legit lease and maintaining the US as a democracy. 

"What exactly was the Navy seeing in this girl Antara? She alone could prevent the next Holocaust? She could rescue the lease? She would be able to understand the complexities of British politics?" 

The Jamshedpur honcho pulled a lot of influence in Britain.

There was only one option left: use the Alamo scare (Battle of the Alamo, 1836) against the US Government, what had worked to get BT's House to the Palace in the mid-1980s. The US Govt would try to attack the drug networks, it would attempt to reduce immigration, put up razor wires, maybe even build a Wall. 

Would it work, the Big Red One had asked. 

Why not, the Jamshedpur honcho had replied. "I had sent one of my own into Brabourne hostel in the late 1990s, she had enacted Alamo, scaling the walls as Mexican soldiers had done against the Texians, and the Navy never raised a squeak, allowed her to prevail over other students, college professors, even the hostel superintendent."

(The above was true, even in the present day, Brabourne hostel continued to face problems from intruders trying to scale the boundary wall, an Alamo scare.)

The Jamshedpur honcho's Alamo girl arrived in Delhi in 2011, Lima in tow.

April 6, 2025.