For our next trick we bring you—UFOs

Why do so many UFOs seem to prefer the USA? Are the aliens watching too much Netflix? How about a few of them heading for the land of the holy cow? Pic/AFP

It was a circular patch of flattened grass where nothing grew, I was told. We were in a Meghalayan village called Mawsinram, and the patch was about 20 meters wide. It must have been a small flying saucer then, I said to the man.

"We are grateful the aliens picked Mawsinram, no matter how big their saucer was," the man said. "Tourists flock here now to see the grass patch and they all buy at least a bottle of my plum brandy."

UFOs have been back in the news since last year when the US Department of Defense officially released three unclassified videos, purportedly tracking flying things that could not be identified or explained.

We used to call them UFOs back in the day and believed they contained multi-legged green aliens who abducted people to perform weird experiments on them, mess with their minds and in certain cases even have sex with them. They said the USA had brought down some UFOs and was holding some captured aliens in a top-secret installation that everyone knew about called Area 51.

Because calling them UFOs made them easy to dismiss, it was suggested they be called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and that name has stuck. One writer suggested that they could be called Completely Ridiculous Alien Piffle (CRAP). I kinda still like UFO.

My questions are simple and silly, as they always are - Why do so many UFOs seem to prefer the USA? Are the aliens watching too much Netflix? How about a few of them unidentified flying cigars fly our way here to the land of the holy cow?

Why do they have so many different shapes, ranging from saucers to vertical cigar shapes? Are we being simultaneously studied by several species of aliens?

In fact, why don't they just take over the planet and rule us, exactly as in the movie Independence Day? We could let them have Trump, Bill Gates, Boris Johnson, Putin, Xi Jinping and Bolsonaro to perform their experiments on.

Why are UFO sightings always in poor and deceptive lighting conditions when things are half perceived and half imagined?

Why don't they ever land for, say, refuelling, or taking a closer look at the Taj Mahal?

I'd like to answer those questions now. It's not true that UFOs prefer the US though the first sighting ever reported was near Mt Rainier, Washington. Kenneth Arnold saw nine crescent-shaped flying objects, whose motion he described as similar to a saucer skimming over water. That pretty phrase struck and ‘flying saucers' were born. An unsurprising number of people started seeing other flying saucers right away.

UFOs have been sighted in 24 countries, including Belarus. However, it remains true that the USA, where some people believe that Democrats are pizza-eating satan-worshippers who run a global pedophile ring, has the highest reported number of UFO sightings and abductions.

Why so many shapes? UAPs are visible because they reflect light, whether from the sun, the moon, or some other source. A flat flying object could look like a cigar when viewed vertically.

Are they hostile? Might they take us over? Historically human beings have perceived a dire threat from anything that could not be explained satisfactorily using scientific, logical terms. I call your attention to the earliest known UAP, seen near Rome, which resembled jagged blue white streaks reaching down from the sky during thunderstorms. No one knew what on earth they were until someone suggested that the god Zeus sitting on Mt Olympus was pissed off with Romans and throwing lightning bolts at them.

The chances that UAPs contain aliens are very slim. The chances that UAP sightings are probably something odd made even odder by poor lighting and overactive imaginations are very high. As I write this, there are over 6,000 satellites zipping around our planet like a swarm of flies, some 3,000 or so weather balloons released daily by meteorologists, and about 7 million drones in different shapes, sizes and speeds.

Come night and they are joined by trillions of stars. It's a wonder we don't see many, many more UFOs far more frequently.

In brief, I would strongly recommend that a high-level task force of top-notch scientists study UAPs seriously and get to the bottom of things with all dispatch but I also wouldn't spend sleepless nights worrying about alien takeovers.

Of concern, though, is the UFO reportedly sighted over the Prime Minister's house on Lok Kalyan Marg in New Delhi on June 7, 2018, and immediately reported by the Special Protection Group personnel. The UFO was blatantly trespassing within the 2-km no-fly zone around the PM's house.

It's a true blessing that he will soon move to a new 15 acre, alien-proof residential complex costing Rs 13,450 crore.

Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.