A tailor and a man on the moon

Fifty-five years back, almost to the day in July 1969, two events took place. The major event was that Chooru Ram, the resident tailor at my school, was steeling himself to believe in science and space travel. The minor event was that Neil Armstrong had landed on the moon. Both, as I learnt, were interconnected.

Like many other boarding schools, Shimla’s Bishop Cotton School was a tiny ‘nation-state’ in itself. Apart from its administration and hierarchy, it was also fairly self-sufficient. There was a very obvious requirement of a huge kitchen, and there was an infirmary, a bakery and ‘dhobi ghat’. It also had its own barber and tailor. The barber’s mandate was to cut hair as close as possible, preferably without injury to the scalp. Then, the tailor, ah, well, he was the one and only Chooru Ram. By his own assertion, Chooru Ram had been prescribed a medicine which was only to be taken in the evenings when the lights were low and the comings and goings in the tailor room had decreased. He would pull the bottle out of a cupboard and place the medicine next to his miracle-working sewing machine. With each swig of medicine, the foot pedal of the sewing machine would go faster. The hand wheel would accelerate to an indeterminate speed. School uniforms would be stitched or repaired in the twinkling of an eye by this one-man assembly line.

The fact that he was the senior tailor in school did not deter him from having a mind of his own. He had his own version of the sciences and was an original ‘flat-earther’. He did not believe that the planet was round and coaxed by the wheels and windmills of his mind, also dismissed the planet’s rotation on its axis or around the sun. Those were days before television and various people, ranging from schoolmasters to pupils, showed him books and magazines with graphic depictions of the solar system. Chooru Ram was neither interested, nor impressed. He had a simple answer to all this badgering, “If what you say is true, and the earth goes round and round, then, why is this door in the same place in the evening? It should be in the opposite position.” And further, “Has someone seen that the earth is round? You show me pictures which have been made by people who have not seen the earth except from earth.” The simplicity of this logic, while fallible, could not be explained or discussed, especially after he had had his medicine.

On July 24, 1969, the space harvest sown by American President John F Kennedy some years earlier was reaped by President Richard Nixon. A manned mission landed on the moon. On their return, the astronauts of Apollo 11 were feted and this historic moment reverberated around the world. This also led to a slew of brightly coloured print coverage. In August that year, a special edition of the iconic ‘Life’ magazine carried a grand visual spectacle of the moon landing. This publication, among others, was something that came home regularly.

My father, who taught physics at Bishop Cotton, in his wisdom, decided to loan this and some other publications with pictures of the earth taken from the moon, to a group of students who sallied forth to show them to Chooru Ram. These, once and for all, were expected to prove that the earth was round.

Reports came back that when these publications were shown to the tailor, sparks prepared to fly from the sewing machine. Chooru Ram was in distress and as far as he was concerned, these scientific measures were blasphemes. “Why did they do that?” he is said to have cried. “Why do they want to look for god when he is in our hearts?” For him, the moon mission was taken as man’s temerity to look for the divine. No more, no less.

It took a while to mollify him that these wanderings into space were not in search of god. As far as one knew, the so-called ‘seekers’ believed more in empirical science, as compared to something else. Then came the day when matters between science, the moon mission and Chooru Ram came to be sorted. President Nixon decided to gift a piece of the moon that had been brought back by the astronauts, to various countries around the world. India also received a small moon rock and this was then sent on tour across the country. In Shimla, this was placed for display in the old band stand on the Ridge, the structure that now houses a restaurant. Some of us went to take a look and as far as we were concerned, this priceless object looked no different from any other stone. The matter was dutifully reported to Chooru Ram. His reaction is not known.

Now, for a disclaimer: there may be some embellishments in this story, but those are only in terms of language. A little ‘verbal decoration’. ‘Dal pe tadka’, coriander and chilli garnish, if you will. However, the dish remains intact. The facts in this story remain correct to the best of my knowledge. Neil Armstrong, despite what conspiracy theorists may say, did walk on the moon. More importantly, Chooru Ram started believing in a miracle called science and even began passing the message along.