Why Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian in space, rarely thinks about his time there

As I sat down with Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma (retired) and asked him about his experience as the first Indian to go into space – and this is a legend we all have grown up with – he told me the experience was so overwhelming for him that he had still not come to terms with it.

“It’s difficult to recover from it. I still feel so small,” Sharma said.

From my school textbooks, I remember that he had replied with “Saare jahan se achcha” when the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, asked him how India looked from space. Having been in the air force, he had anyway travelled and flown over the length and breadth of the country.

Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma: “My parents were born and brought up in Pakistan. I was born just after Partition in Patiala, and while all my relatives are up north, I was raised in Hyderabad. As part of the Indian Air Force, I served all over – from Gujarat to Assam and down south, so I am from all over, and I don’t like to label myself as belonging to one state or the other.”

So how did the air force happen? I wanted to understand his...

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