Space shuttle Discovery

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!