A few days ago I was on my way to work around 10
a.m., running late. I was on ‘Soil Conservation road’, (yes, a strange name for
a road), the prime stretch of the so-called ‘scenic route’ I usually take to
work, enjoying a smooth drive in a relatively new Honda Accord, which I
shamelessly stole from my husband. Of course, for a recent graduate and an
aspiring academic, smooth transmission, quiet wiper blades, obedient windows
and a decent stereo system all define luxury.
I was listening to an old CD by renowned Carnatic violinist
Lalgudi Jayaraman, which a friend of mine presented with the hope of enriching
my musical tastes after being utterly disappointed by my foolish excitement
over a mediocre Hindi film track. I have been religiously listening to Indian
classical music since then, hoping that, one day, I would be able to join those
Carnatic connoisseur groups where in-depth discussions on ragas take place.
I was driving uphill, when I noticed a strange looking
object in the sky behind the trees, a plane carrying another smaller one on
top. Suddenly, it struck me that it was Discovery,
the retired space shuttle being taken from Florida to the Smithsonian museum in
Chantilly, Virginia. I slowed down to reach for my phone and called my husband
to tell him that the shuttle was just above me. Well, it had been in the news
and in emails for sometime that the shuttle would be flown to the Smithsonian
and would be over the DC area around 10 a.m. on that day. When I reached my
desk, I found a note from my thoughtful officemate reminding me that it was the
shuttle fly-over day and she was going out to the lawn to see it. I once again
proved my innate inability to be punctual, but fortunately, this time, I didn’t
miss the event.
Well, the sight in itself was not remarkable, just a
sizable strange looking object flying low, but it was surely a historic moment.
Like many who grew up in the ‘80s in India, when Rakesh Sharma’s space journey
in the Russian spacecraft Soyuz 11 made headlines, space voyage fascinated
me as a kid. I still recall a smiling portrait of the young Sharma, in a white
space suite, which appeared in Eureka,
a popular kids' science magazine in those days. It was during Indira Gandhi’s
time, and she famously had a conversation with India’s first cosmonaut where
she asked him how India looked from above, to which Sharma replied “sare jahan se achcha”. Names such as
Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova became popular in school science quiz
rounds then. It was also during those times Halley’s comet became visible, and
we used to go to the fields in front of our house around midnight to spot it.
It may all be nostalgic, a bit melodramatic too,
but still they are memories that haven’t faded away. Many years later, I
watched life inside the space station on an Imax screen in the Smithsonian Air
and Space Museum in Washington DC. A few years ago a former NASA astronaut gave
a talk in the university where I went to graduate school. For a second, the impulsive
part of me thought of meeting him after the talk and asking for his autograph,
but I later decided not to act silly!
Outer space or anything extraterrestrial fascinates
many people and I am one of them. I wonder what it is that rouses the
curiosity. There must have been equally ground-breaking events in other fields
too. Hollywood must have played a part in glamourizing space science. However, I
had not seen E.T. as a kid; I watched it much later, well past childhood, so it
was not Spielberg for me!
