Isro sparks a thousand childhood Moon memories

As Chandrayaan-2 geared up for a dramatic lunar leap shedding its earthly orbits, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) sparked a lunar memory refresh with this Tuesday Tweet: “Have a childhood Moon memory?” Twitterati responded, kicking up a nostalgic rush and how!

Isro was mighty impressed with this deep dive by Nidhi, whose childhood recall had an imaginative twist: “I used to eat one roti when mom would show the moon from the front balcony of our house. I insisted I will only eat the second roti when she shows me two moons,” Nidhi reminisced.

But the twist was in how her mother did the trick. Continued Nidhi: “She started showing me the second moon from the backyard! My childhood belief was that there are two moons!”

That flight of imagination was what Isro yearned to spark, as India’s most ambitous lunar mission headed for an unprecedented September 7 soft-landing. “Thank you for sharing a piece of your childhood with us. It’s great to see so many of you with fond memories about the Moon,” the space agency tweeted on Wednesday. Nidhi’s memory was right there on top.

Rooted to their terrestrial bonds, hooked to Isro’s daily updates, there were many more moon memories that stood out. For instance, Shivendra Prakash’s lunar nostalgia had a fond family connection, a sentimental, earthy link.

It was Prakash’s first day in a hostel away from home. “It was the first time. I was very sad to be away from my parents and family. While sleeping, I used to see moon from windows, and think that even my parents and sisters would be seeing it at the same time. So I felt connected to them and it was great solace to me,” he recalled.

Fifty years ago, Neil Armstrong’s Moon landing had sparked a billion dreams worldwide. A generation later, many Indians harboured an Indian repeat. For N K Abhishek Chowdhury, that dream had taken deep root even as a child.

“In my childhood, all the interest about space was due to my mother,” he recalled in a tweet. “Whenever there was a power cut, my sister, me and my mom would sit in lawn and ask weird questions about the moon, space, aliens. She said interesting things and at that age, I dreamt of landing on the moon and sit there with my mom, watching the Earth!”