By Kumkum Chadha
From Gunjan to Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla to Shux to Shubh has been a long and eventful journey. “No need to go out of the earth. Stay put here” is what Shubhanshu’s mother, Asha, had told him when he shared his ambition of being an astronaut.
Someone who grew up on samosas from Tewari sweet shop in Lucknow, Shubhanshu never bought any. He waited for his father to get them on his way back from work.
His father, Shambhu Dayal, retired as a personal secretary to a minister some ten years ago, Shubhanshu is the first from his family to have joined the forces. And how? He was in his early teens when the Kargil war broke out. He applied for the NDA after borrowing a form from a friend who changed his mind at the last minute. Shukla seized the opportunity, grabbed his form and applied.
Eighteen years on, he enrolled for the Gaganyaan Mission. Both times his family was kept in the dark. But that is Shubhanshu: the man who keeps his professional life distinct from his personal. If his sister’s version is anything to go by, during Balakot airstrike no one in the family knew where he was, not even his wife, Kamna.
While part of the family was elated about his going to space and the city proud that “Shukla ji a larka antriksh mein ja raha hai”, Shuklaji’s son is going to space, his mother was praying. It was only after the space ship docked that she heaved a sigh of relief: “Ab koi dar nahin… bas wapas aane ka intezaar hai,” nothing to fear now, just awaiting his return, she told media persons, fighting back tears. She had fed him dahi chini, yogurt and sugar, an Indian ritual considered auspicious.
Tense moments before the docking are a given, the first steps being that before docking the spacecraft must match the ISS orbit and speed.
Aptly called Rendezvous, the process involves synchronizing the spacecraft’s location and velocity. Once it is aligned, slow manoeuvres bring the capsule close to the ISS for a secure connection.
Even while the world jumps with joy at the successful docking, the astronauts have a two-hour waiting period before they can enter the space station. This is to ensure that there are no pressure imbalances or leaks. All that is now history. Shukla is in space, having taken the first step for India’s first human spaceflight.
During his fortnight stay, Shukla would lead experiments in microgravity; decode muscle health, both for astronauts and people with muscle loss on earth.
Technicalities apart, the high point was a 17-minute conversation between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shukla. The prime minister came across as a student willing to learn: he asked several questions, some personal, some about the mission. Shukla, who the prime minister often referred to as Shubh, told Modi that he was having an amazing view of the Earth “watching 16 sunrise and 16 sunsets” every single day.
He also spoke about the “earth from outside” wherein he said “it seems no border exists, no state exists, no countries exist…the Earth looks completely one” Shukla said, a far cry from the situation where wars and bloodshed have become the norm be it Ukraine, Iran or India and Pakistan for that matter. Add to that the communal and religious divide that seems to have gripped several parts of the world, including India. Against this backdrop, as of now, Shukla is in a “happy space” both literally and figuratively.
Of course, there are personal challenges like drinking water, walking or sleeping and absence of gravity: “As I am talking to you, I have tied my legs, else I will float and go up” Shukla told the prime minister. As for India and how it looks, Shukla said that it looked “big and grand, much bigger than what we see on the map”. Shukla may not have borrowed his “hero” Rakesh Sharma’s Saare jahan se achcha line, but the sentiment was similar.
For the uninitiated, when Indira Gandhi, the then prime minister had asked Sharma how India looked from the sky, he had said: “Saare jahan se achcha”, better than the whole world. That was 41 years ago, but the words came alive during Shukla’s conversation with the prime minister and through him, hundreds and thousands of Indians who were that evening glued to their television sets.
From Sharma to Shukla, India has come a long way. Both landmark events, Sharma and Shukla’s missions differ significantly. Sharma’s mission was a Soviet-led diplomatic initiative against Shukla’s commercially arranged effort. Sharma’s mission flagged the Indo-Soviet friendship, while Shukla’s seat was secured by India on a private US aided mission, Axiom-4. Sharma was the astronaut on board on Soyuz while Shukla’s launch vehicle is Falcon-9 which is larger and needless to say technologically more advanced.
Sharma and his crew had used two different capsules: one for docking and another for return while Shukla and his team will use the same spacecraft for its journey to and fro.
When Sharma went to space, India’s space programme was not as developed. Today, India has emerged as a world leader: it has put a spacecraft on the moon; launched missions close to the sun and is planning a manned space flight in the near future.
Experiments apart, what has changed is the look of India from above. If reports are anything to go by, Shukla would see the night time lights as Sharma never did. Nighttime lights, as captured from space, represent the intensity of artificial lights on the earth’s surface. They are an indication of development activities and socio-economic changes, including urbanisation. During Sharma’s voyage, earth’s images were few and far between because development was not as it is now and nor were the cameras equipped to capture those images.
A study was carried out by ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre, depicting the change to an increase of 43 percent in the radiance of night-time lights since 2012. Therefore, what Shukla is able to witness today, Sharma could not.
More recently, Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams who was stuck in space for months instead of the original eight days that were planned had said that “India is amazing” from space: “Every time we went over the Himalayas, we got incredible pictures. It happened like a ripple and flows down into India,” she had then said, highlighting the rich colours visible from orbit.
While right minded Indians are rejoicing Shukla’s feat, there are cynics who are crying foul. For starters, it is about costs. Though India has not officially put out the figures, the amount paid by ISRO is estimated to be around Rs 500 crore for Shukla’s seat.
ISRO chief V Narayanan is right when he says that the benefits far outweigh the costs: “For a country of 140 crore people what we have spent is only marginal” adding that it is a toss-up between long-term capability building versus short term financial arithmetic.
Nothing could sum this better. The Gaganyaan mission spans Rs 20,000 crore and Shukla’s space mission should be seen as “an early and necessary investment” to quote Narayanan yet again.
Statistics apart, what surpasses everything is the sense of national pride and the “India has done it” feeling. And that one sentiment is unmeasurable and goes beyond arithmetic. So those counting the notes are clearly missing the woods for the trees. As Indians, they have also missed that one heartbeat that most Indians experienced when Shukla docked in space. Equally, they failed to stand with India in its moment of glory and pride. Nothing could be worse.
—The writer is an author, journalist and political commentator
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