Setting up shop on Mars might not be such a great idea

As we pump bullets into our favorite endangered chinkara, or unload truckfulls of polythene and used condoms into our sludge-filled rivers, there is but one hope that sustains us in our day-to-day activity of planetary destruction; that the damage we are inflicting upon mother earth doesn't really matter in the long run because someday, when the wind blows north, we will all climb aboard our shiny new ships and shed these polluted lands for the gorgeous crimson skies of Mars. Our future home and the birthplace of our grandchildren.

Now I know what you are thinking: I do not pump bullets, I am more of a bow and arrow kind of guy. You, sir, won't be allowed on the mothership. Having said that, you still have time to purchase that cool new plasma rifle once it becomes available in 2025. But that is beside the point. For it doesn't matter what method you utilize for raping and pillaging the planet, what I intend to point out is the possibility that maybe, just maybe, it might not be such a good idea for us to leave these shores and establish new colonies on Mars.

First of all, I concede that it might be years, even centuries before our species is able to devise a commercially viable method for flying out all the men, women and Michael Jacksons out of our atmosphere and into the bracing carbon dioxide filled one of Mars. And it might take even longer to seduce an overtly hostile crotch-kicking, pepper-spraying red planet into one that would spread it's legs for us, allowing us to sow the seed of our civilization in its balmy womb. The question I am raising is whether this long arduous process of seduction is even worth the effort.

Historically, whenever humans have emigrated from their place of origin to settle someplace else, it hasn't been long before the umbilical bond they hold with their mother country has snapped and they've begun to look upon its current inhabitants with contempt. For example, take the case of America. Even though most citizens of this country arrived here after fleeing Europe, they currently have an opinion about Europeans that is only marginally better than the one they have about Californians. And this, a mere half-century after the last of the unwashed tea-drinking, snail-eating, protection money-demanding hordes from the continent made their way across Ellis island and took up residence in the slovenly ghettoes of New Jersey. Americans now despise the old continent with all their heart, considering their European ancestry to be an ugly sore on the asscheek of their family tree, something not to be discussed in public.

Secondly, through scientific conjecture, we are now in a position to predict exactly what would happen to the human race after it settles down on Mars. They say that due to conditions on that planet being entirely different from those on Earth, after a few generations of humans have lived, died and created bizarre new religions over there, the human musculoskeletal structure will change to adapt with Martian surroundings. For example, brains would grow larger, hearts would grow smaller and the body would grow more tenuous. Basically, humans would evolve and branch out into an entirely new species. A species of freakish hominoids bearing a greater resemblance to an Indian graduate student than their evolutionary ancestors, the humans.

And you know what such freaks will do. Especially those that are physically feeble and intellectually superior. They will sit around in their glass-walled research laboratories upto the wee hours of the morning, brains engulfed by a tired rage against everything that is not food, body suffering from a severe lack of sleep due to a looming deadline for demonstrating to their graduate advisor that they haven't been living off the research money without having anything to show for it. Goddamnit. Okay. So anyways, these psychotic beings will then devise powerful and spectacular new methods for destroying everyone else in the solar system using high intensity death rays brewed in their labs specifically for that purpose. And as I pointed out earlier, by that time, they would have developed a healthy loathing for the planet of their origin as well as its inhabitants to have any kind of qualms about its destruction.

Currently, we are mired in a war in Iraq which will probably continue for the next 50 years after which everybody would have blown up everybody else. At the same time, we have another conflict brewing in Iran which will culminate in the year 2075 after a robotic Salman Rushdie captures the Ayatollah El-Camino (By this time, the Middle-East will be 60% Hispanic) and kills him with one swat of his new book "The Koran was plagiarized from the Bible and other short stories". And who the fuck knows, tomorrow tiny little Turdistan might strike oil and turn out to have a murderous dictator who planned on killing the president's half-brother. With all of our earthly armies thus battling it out amongst themselves, how then will this planet manage to unite and cobble up a coalition to defend itself from the Martians?

Secondly, even if any two countries in the world engage in warfare, at some point they pause, think it over and realize that in spite of their differences, they still dwell on the same planet so it would be pragmatic not to try anything so extreme that it could quite possibly result in the entire planet blowing up into smithereens. But when its Martians versus the Earthlings, there would be no reason for cooler heads to prevail. Fuck that planet, the Martians would say, that blue ball always stuck out like a sore thumb in the sky.

So you see, colonizing Mars is just not worth it since it will probably backfire on us in the future. Let us not not even take that chance. Instead how about we nurture this planet, eh? How about we go about our business as if there were no other planets we could run to after we are done squeezing the juice out of this one? Let us all do our bit towards keeping the earth habitable for the foreseeable future. Let us not kill any more chinkaras. Let us store our polythene bags in our laundry rooms. And most importantly, let us dispose of our used condoms in an environment-friendly way; namely, by reusing them.