Boundaries in Space

 

Space travel, once a fantasy in the 19th and early 20th century is now no longer such a novelty. It is no longer just travel but also covers stay and conduct of experiments in Space Stations, where Gp Capt Shubhanshu Shukla, a qualified test pilot with over 2000 hours of flying experience  too spent some time and where Sunita Williams, a veteran of three space missions, got stuck and stayed on for full nine months. While Sunita Williams is a veteran US Naval officer of Indian origin, there is another Indian American, who we are extremely proud of, Kalpana Chawla, born in Karnal, she dreamt big and made those dreams come true by becoming the first woman Astronaut of Indian origin to travel in the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997. She unfortunately died in the 2003 last flight of Columbia itself during the reentry into Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. 

We have a small anecdote of our own with India’s first cosmonaut himself.  Meeting with Sqn Ldr Rakesh Sharma has been a part of the highlights of my memories of NDA when both he and Wg Cdr Ravish Malhotra called on their Alma Mater in 1984. We were overawed by the occasion and considered ourselves lucky to have seen them. Circa 2010, I was in Wellington in the Unit CSD Canteen purchasing the regular monthly grocery and guess who do I bump into, Rakesh Sharma himself, doing exactly the same thing with not a soul
even recognising him. I immediately walked upto him, introduced myself and my better half and reminded of our brief interaction from the NDA and that he  was from my Squadron Juliet too. I asked him if I could get my kids to meet him, he magnanimously invited us for a cup of tea and my kids Abhijat and Ananya too got to shake hands with this legend and get themselves clicked with him. There were no smart phones then, so selfies were still unheard of and yours truly had the privilege of capturing this moment. He has settled down in Coonoor post his premature retirement. His humility and spontaneity left us totally floored, here was such a celebrity who had no airs whatsoever hosting us.

Now of course Shux is back, welcome home India’s first astronaut, yes you read that right, the first cosmonaut was Sqn Ldr (later Gp Capt) Rakesh Sharma,AC. We know that the world is divided by boundaries of states but we humans have not spared even the celestial space and gone ahead to carve that out also. The Russians were pioneers in the space as most of us recall Yuri Gagrin being the first man and Valentina Tarashkova the first woman in Space, they coined the term ‘cosmonaut’, from ‘cosmos’ and ‘naut’ depicting the sailor. I think the term could have become one which could have been adopted by all, as it is for soldiers. But unfortunately this maiden space trip triggered a race between the US and erstwhile USSR, which eventually culminated in Jul 1969 when Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon. The Americans to be different from the evil Commies called their space travellers as ‘Astronauts’. When it was the turn of European nations to hitch hike with the Americans they called them spationaut and the Chinese not to be left out named them “taikonauts”. So far Indians are still taking lift with either the Russians or renting a paid flight, (I believe it was Rs 548 Cr) with the Americans but soon we shall have our own “Gaganyatri” or “Vyomonaut” as Gagan and Vyom both mean the ‘sky’ in Sanskrit and Yatri is a ‘traveller’. Amidst all this trouble over finding suitable names for them, I was reminded of the artificial language boundaries within our country also the Marathi-Hindi or Tamil-Hindi conundrum.  Hey, some of us old timers may recall the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong song from the movie “Shall We Dance” “You say tomato, I say tomaato, you say potato, I say potaaato, let’s call the whole thing off..!” Truly let’s call the whole thing off!!