It’s been almost 3 months in UK now. So far we had not visited much of the places around, mainly due to the weather. There is an Interesting thing to share here. When we were travelling in cab in to office first day, our driver who was from Punjab, told us a thing to remembering while in UK.

“Don’t trust three “W”s while you are here. Women, Work and Weather”

I am not sure about the first two, but was pretty much agreed to what he said about the weather.

I had quite bit of interesting things to share, but may not be in this blog page. But, will surely share shortly.

My colleague here suggested me as I am here for short time, I could visit as many places as possible and try to understand the culture and way of life.

Let’s slightly go off topic now..

Second World War (Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WW_II) and the holocaust has been topics of my interest and I always believed that the planned execution of millions people could have been averted, if the powerful nations had directly confronted the communist regime and put pressure to end the extermination .(Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust)

The pain, the horror and the helpless suffering of people is simply un-imaginable and sometimes it is very strange that how could we humans could be worse than animals. I have read quite a bit, seen documentaries, movies and sometime really feel it is the struggle and suffering makes us strong as we see the state of Israel today.

When my colleagues told me that the Royal Air Force museum has few of the best Aircrafts used during world war, we were naturally excited to visit the place in Cosford (Post code :TF11 8UP). With the help of Sat-Nav, finding a place in UK has not been a problem. And as it was Easter weekend, and we wanted to make sure that we reach the place as early as possible. With the company of my colleague, we were all set… The Sat-Nav actually guides to the rare entrance and we felt we were lost. But we did follow the sign board and took help to find out the place. The best thing what I noticed is, people here are friendly and willing to help. When we asked the gentleman for way to RAF museum, who seemed to be busy in some discussion with his friends he came instantly and told us the way. It wasn’t much difficult to reach then…

Built on a massive scale, the museum hosts  a world-class aircraft collection, integrated with special exhibitions, films, interactive, artwork, engines, missiles, photographs, uniforms, medals and research and education facilities (http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/). It has a section dedicated to the test flights, war planes and the military hardware like missiles and tanks housed in 4 massive hangars.

There are huge transport aircrafts outside, and with brief history and service period, built and other details. In fact all the aircrafts have basic info about the usage, decommissioning and the contribution to the War or otherwise. The hangers have history, development and other literature related to the WW II, and the history of the aircrafts. There are pictures of POW cells and interesting write ups as well. Reading all of it takes time, but its worth spending time there.

Quite a bit of Indian connection as well. As we were once a British colony and as a part of empire, India did participate in the war fighting beside British Army. The medals and the subsequent contributions are mentioned and the efforts are lauded in the form of write ups.

There are games for kids, which my colleague’s son aged 3  enjoyed most, including controlling the flight using joystick and dropping the bomb. And Yes, there is a 4D demo as well, but we need to buy the tickets for that.

Apart, there is a dedicated section to the cold war and nuclear arms race; there is a full demo on disarmament and Cuban missile crisis as a short documentary with complete audio visuals.

With the advancement in science and theory of relativity and the famous E=mc² equation by Einstein (a Jew), that led to the development of the nuclear bomb and the subsequent test know as the Manhattan project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project). It was explained in brief, but there is a connection to the holy Shrimad Bhagavat Geeta (I remember reading this in Kannada Magazine Taranga when I was in high school).As the atom bomb was detonated on 16 July 1945 at 0529 HRS,Physicist Robert Oppenheimer, Supervising Scientist Manhattan Project remembers a quote from Geetha.

“If the radiance of a thousand suns

Were to burst at once into the sky

That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one…

I am become Death, The shatterer of Worlds”

Indeed, with the “Paapa/sin” at the peak with death of millions of people during WW II, the end came in the form of great power accompanied by lights of thousands of suns and to destroy/wipe out the population as a whole ( I am not justifying the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombing in any way and have my deepest sympathy to the suffering caused.)

Background 

When Lord Krishna, shows his Vishwaroopa to Arjun while preaching about the ultimate Karma, everyone in the battle field of Kurukshetra see a light as bright as thousands of Suns. It was Arjuna, Bheeshma Pitamaha and Sanjaya see the actual Vishwaroopa of lord Krishna. The Purana’s have extensive reference to the devastating powers some astras/arms carried and are more like modern day nuclear weapons. What is more interesting is the technology that has been explained in detailed including the airplanes, weapons and their effects. There is also reference to the responsible usage of such weapons as they could potentially make the soil useless for hundreds of years.

With all these preaching, which date back  almost 5000 years , we still have to learn a lot from our ancient culture.

It was a visit worth remembering.

Though we could not explore all of it and its infact impossible to do so in a single day, it was indeed a memorable trip for us. With crowd swelling every moment and virtually no place in cafeteria, we finished some yummy lunch in there and pushed off back home.

(Thanks to Amitha and Sripadha for the pics)

(Editing – Amitha)