The flawless and historic soft-landing of India’s Chandrayaan 3 lander on the Moon on August 23 has enhanced the already formidable reputation of the Indian Space Research Organization or ISRO around the world.
In naming the lander Vikram, ISRO has paid a glorious tribute to Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, the pioneer of India’s space program and a great institution builder apart from being a highly regarded scientist.
To find out what it means to the extended Sarabhai family to have a lander named after one of them now sitting on the Moon, Mayank Chhaya Reports spoke to his daughter, the well-known Ahmedabad-based classical dancer, artist, activist and writer Dr Mallika Sarabhai.
In naming the lander Vikram, ISRO has paid a glorious tribute to Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, the pioneer of India’s space program and a great institution builder apart from being a highly regarded scientist.
To find out what it means to the extended Sarabhai family to have a lander named after one of them now sitting on the Moon, Mayank Chhaya Reports spoke to his daughter, the well-known Ahmedabad-based classical dancer, artist, activist and writer Dr Mallika Sarabhai.
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00:36 - The flawless and historic soft landing
00:39 of India's Chandrayaan-3 lander on the moon on August 23rd
00:44 has enhanced the already formidable reputation
00:47 of the Indian Space Research Organization,
00:50 or ISRO, around the world.
00:53 In naming the lander Vikram,
00:55 ISRO has paid a glorious tribute to Dr. Vikram Sarabhai,
00:58 the pioneer of India's space program,
01:01 a great institutional builder,
01:03 and a highly regarded scientist.
01:05 To find out what it means to the extended Sarabhai family
01:09 to have a lander named after one of them,
01:12 now sitting on the moon,
01:13 Mayank Chaiya reports spoke to his daughter,
01:16 the well-known classical dancer, artist, activist,
01:19 and writer, Dr. Mallika Sarabhai.
01:22 She reminisces about how it was to grow up
01:26 with Vikram Sarabhai as her father.
01:28 She spoke to MCR from Ahmedabad.
01:31 Welcome to Mayank Chaiya reports, Mallika.
01:34 It's a great pleasure to have you on.
01:36 - Thank you very much.
01:38 - In a manner of speaking,
01:41 an avatar of Vikram Bhai is on the moon.
01:44 How about that, Mallika?
01:45 - Yeah, I am filled with joy
01:53 and nostalgia and gratitude
01:56 to imagine that papa's vision of over 50 years ago
02:04 has become the vision of thousands of scientists in ISRO
02:09 who have worked steadfastly for 50 years
02:13 to get us to this moment.
02:16 It is an extraordinary feat of human belief,
02:20 faith, dedication,
02:23 and a spirit that personifies humanity.
02:29 And I am so filled with emotion,
02:31 I can't even tell you, conflicting emotions,
02:35 emotions that I miss my father very much,
02:38 emotions that I hope this doesn't become a race
02:41 to say I am first, I am better, you are behind me,
02:45 because that was never his intention in science.
02:48 I hope that scientists rededicate themselves
02:51 to making this part of the journey
02:53 to make humanity a better place, a more dignified place,
02:57 a less unhappy and unhealthy place,
03:00 because that was always papa's vision
03:02 for science and technology,
03:03 to make life better for the last person.
03:06 So I hope that with this victory,
03:08 we don't fall into the bigger, better, faster board
03:13 that the world seems to be in,
03:14 that India certainly seems to be in,
03:17 and that we remember what our real mission should be.
03:19 - Indeed, when the applause went up
03:23 at the ISRO control room,
03:27 announcing, heralding that it has landed successfully,
03:30 did you have any particular emotion
03:33 traveling back to your father of those days?
03:36 And I ask, especially because he passed away in '71,
03:41 which was two years after the first moon landing.
03:44 So recall whatever you can for our viewers.
03:48 - I remember a lunch that papa gave in Bombay
03:51 for all the astronauts who had been to the moon,
03:54 and my being at the launch,
03:56 and everybody giving me a signed autograph,
03:59 photograph of them,
04:01 and my going around as a little girl,
04:04 all around meeting all of them,
04:06 and them being all very nice to me.
04:08 That's one very clear memory.
04:09 The second clear memory is of papa talking very seriously
04:14 at dinner table, night after night,
04:16 about his vision for what science could do for India.
04:20 And the sparkle in his eye,
04:22 and the very mischievous smile on his face,
04:26 that were a constant.
04:28 And his ability to make every single person
04:33 feel that they were part of it,
04:35 that they were as important as he or anybody else,
04:40 that it was the team, it was the spirit,
04:44 it was the dedication,
04:45 that they were invested in this dream.
04:48 I think these are qualities
04:50 that we need to reconnect with today.
04:54 - I also remember a teasing dialogue
04:57 that used to happen periodically between papa and amma,
05:00 where amma would romanticize the moon in her dancing,
05:03 and papa would say,
05:04 "He's just a prickly, pimply man, you know,
05:07 what is this you're talking about his beauty?"
05:09 And they would argue, and they would laugh,
05:12 and they would joke at each other.
05:14 And papa would say,
05:15 "One day I'm gonna prove to you
05:17 that the moon is not what you think it is."
05:19 And amma saying, "Vikram, just shut your eyes,
05:22 and you'll see the moon that I'm thinking of."
05:24 - How wonderful is that?
05:26 Tell me, I mean, you were very young at that point.
05:31 Is there any specific memory of your father's
05:35 talking about India eventually going to the moon?
05:39 - I remember in 1968,
05:43 joining papa in Kovilam at the rocket site
05:49 and at the center of what now
05:53 is the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center.
05:55 And papa taking me around and telling me of his dreams
05:59 of a transformed country, a humane world,
06:03 a world where science bettered lives,
06:08 a world where we wouldn't be backward any longer,
06:12 that poverty would be a thing of the past.
06:14 It was idealistic, and it was very, very beautiful.
06:19 - Oh, you know, I was also curious about
06:22 how the extended Sarabhai family would look at,
06:25 for instance, your children.
06:26 Do they have a sense of history that's just been made?
06:31 Are they involved in what's going on?
06:33 What's the world- - Oh, very much so.
06:35 - Yeah, go ahead.
06:36 - Very much so, very much so.
06:39 I think my children, my brother and his children
06:43 and grandchildren take great pride and take great joy
06:49 and even with the huge success of the television series,
06:53 the OTT series "Rocket Boys,"
06:57 my nephews would come back and say to me,
06:59 "You know, our friends are looking at Nehru
07:02 "very differently because of 'Rocket Boys,'
07:04 "that if there was a prime minister
07:06 "who was great enough to trust two scientists like this
07:10 "with everything that told him was not economic sense,
07:14 "then today's narrative of blaming Nehru
07:18 "and saying nothing happened before 2014
07:21 "is completely false."
07:22 And they would take great pride in the fact
07:24 that people were waking up to what Papa dreamt
07:28 and what he wanted for the country
07:30 and how politicians and scientists would trust each other
07:33 and work for the same goal rather than this horse trading
07:37 that has become the norm today.
07:40 So I think they are greatly vested.
07:43 I am not sure of how much they are willing
07:47 to go out of their way to fire the legacy.
07:52 I think Kartikeya and I have both dedicated our lives,
07:57 not because we wanted to be compared with Papa,
08:00 but because Papa infused that in us,
08:03 that whatever we do, he has taken the way of the environment,
08:06 I've taken the arts and performance and so on.
08:09 But I think what both of us do
08:12 is ultimately what Papa and Amma worked for,
08:14 which was to let light into people's lives,
08:18 to open windows, to give voice to the voiceless
08:21 and to be able to use all the privilege
08:23 that one has to make a difference.
08:27 I'm not sure that the next generations are vested in that.
08:31 - You know, one of the many great accomplishment
08:34 of Sarabhai was one as a great institution builder.
08:40 How do you think he would look at ISRO today
08:43 as an institution which has proven itself again
08:48 and again and again with such remarkable economics
08:51 of a space program?
08:53 - I think he would have been very, very proud of ISRO.
08:58 And I think he would have been very, very concerned
09:01 at what the government is doing with ISRO today.
09:04 - Why do you say that?
09:09 - How much do you want me to spell out?
09:11 I mean, it's obvious what is happening
09:13 with the privatization of everything for profit,
09:16 for crony capitalism and for all of that.
09:21 And to see ISRO as a money spinner
09:25 and as a way to trumpet to the world that we are out there
09:29 is not what Papa's dream was.
09:30 It's not what ISRO was created for.
09:33 And I think the pressure that is being put on scientists
09:38 to perform differently,
09:40 I don't know how many will stand up against that.
09:43 - I see.
09:45 In terms of what it does for India's youth,
09:49 what happened this morning,
09:51 or morning my time and evening yours,
09:54 what do you think are the signal effects
09:57 of an achievement of this scale?
09:59 - I hope that for a little while,
10:01 India's youth will stop thinking of how they can kill people
10:04 that they think they hate and go towards something
10:08 that unites the country.
10:09 Because today there is very little that unites the country
10:12 because the forces of divisiveness are so all-pervasive,
10:16 so rich and so clever.
10:18 So I hope that this is something
10:20 that actually unites the country
10:22 and stops us thinking about which community,
10:25 which religion, which color, which language I've come from.
10:28 - I would like you to talk a bit about
10:31 what you think was driving your father's passion,
10:34 because you obviously looked at him,
10:37 viewed him rather closely.
10:39 Why do you think he became what he became
10:41 in terms of this completely extroverted
10:44 scientific temperament?
10:46 - I think the way they were brought up,
10:50 the kind of education they had,
10:52 the kind of people they met from Bertrand Russell
10:54 to Gurudev Tagore,
10:56 to the fact that the Sarabhais were a driving force
11:01 of Gandhiji's movement.
11:04 And this was the reality.
11:06 Building the nation was the reality.
11:08 It was the only reality.
11:10 And the excitement of being able to create a new country,
11:14 a country that was different,
11:16 a country that was egalitarian,
11:18 a country that was just,
11:19 that is what drove them.
11:21 - Do you have any recollection of him talking specifically
11:27 in terms of how he's putting the building blocks
11:30 of India's scientific apparatus together?
11:34 Because that's where it began.
11:37 - I do remember very clearly sitting with him
11:39 when he and Louis Kahn were planning
11:41 the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.
11:43 And I would say to him, "Papa, what is this?"
11:46 And he would explain to me how professional management
11:50 was what was needed for the many public sector undertakings
11:53 that India needed to build
11:55 to be able to reach the last person,
11:57 to be able to quickly, into his words,
11:59 leapfrog into the future,
12:02 to not take 40 years,
12:03 to do what others had taken 40 years.
12:06 How do you do that?
12:07 And for that, professional management was required.
12:09 He was trying to build a cadre of people
12:12 who could run educational institutions,
12:14 health institutions, agricultural institutions,
12:17 research institutions, and so on.
12:20 And it was for me tragic that even nine years later,
12:25 when I graduated from the IIM,
12:27 it was already an FMCG feeder institution,
12:32 and it has remained so.
12:34 - One of his single accomplishments, again,
12:37 was the Physical Research Laboratory, PRL, in Ahmedabad,
12:42 which is the hub of a lot of that happens now.
12:46 Do you have any recollection of that by any measure?
12:50 - No, but I remember being present as a child
12:55 in discussions between Sir C.V. Raman and Papa,
12:58 between Dr. Ram Nadan, who was the first director,
13:00 and Papa.
13:01 You see, Kartikeya and I were always encouraged
13:04 to be around them when they were in the house
13:07 or when they were entertaining.
13:09 So we were always privy to bits and pieces of conversation
13:12 that were going on between Nobel laureates
13:15 and between prima ballerinas and between choreographers
13:18 and Merce Cunningham on the one side
13:20 and Lord Blackett on the other side.
13:23 And we were constantly encouraged to actually
13:25 ask them questions.
13:27 So I think this is the palimpsest that makes up my life
13:31 and makes up my compasses.
13:35 So PRL, we used to go to PRL.
13:40 I remember when I was 13
13:42 and very surreptitiously learning to drive,
13:46 I was driving on the road to PRL,
13:49 not expecting Papa to be there.
13:51 Papa passed me, realized that I was the one driving,
13:55 reversed back quickly,
13:57 and just stood and looked at my driver like this.
14:01 I remember it so clearly.
14:04 - Oh, really?
14:05 You know, he was born in 1919.
14:08 That means he would have been 28 at the time of 1947.
14:13 Very young man.
14:14 Where do you think this sense of loftier purpose
14:18 that he ended up having throughout his life,
14:21 where did that come from?
14:23 - As I said, I think all the things that were fed into him
14:26 as a child, as a dreamer,
14:29 as somebody who was told that not only could you do anything,
14:34 but you must do something for the nation,
14:37 for the people, for independence,
14:39 for humanity, and so on and so forth.
14:42 This was the DNA in which he grew,
14:46 and this was the DNA in which we grew as well,
14:49 I have to say, though post-independence.
14:51 But this is what...
14:53 And that his parents allowed him to dream,
14:55 allowed all the children to dream,
14:58 and gave them in Madame Montessori
15:01 and the Montessori education,
15:03 and then Bertrand Russell writing the recommendation letter
15:08 for Papa to get into St. John's,
15:10 and the war coming, and Papa being brought back
15:13 and not wanting to do anything,
15:15 and then going off to Sassivi Raman,
15:17 and then finding a homie as a mentor,
15:20 a mentor that he could spar with,
15:22 who basically had very similar views,
15:25 but very dissimilar views as well.
15:27 I think all of this fed into it,
15:29 and if you look at that entire generation of people,
15:34 they had stars in their eyes,
15:36 and many of them made those stars into institutions
15:41 and academies and books that still inspire us.
15:47 -Just last couple of things.
15:49 One is, would you by any chance remember
15:52 any extended conversation,
15:54 broader conversation that you would have had before he passed?
15:58 Because by '71, you were old enough
16:01 to understand a lot of what he was saying.
16:03 Is there anything that you might want to recall for us?
16:08 -You know, from the age of about nine
16:14 till the age of 13 or 14,
16:19 I basically was alienated from Papa
16:21 because of his relationship with Kamala Chaudhary
16:24 and what it was doing to my mother,
16:26 and I refused to speak to him.
16:28 And it was only at 13 1/2 or 14
16:31 that I began a conversation and discovered
16:33 that while my emotions were very much my mother's,
16:36 my ethical framework was very much my father's.
16:39 I started understanding that things were not black and white.
16:42 I started understanding the nuances.
16:45 I started understanding his pain in all of that.
16:48 And I think, unlike Kartikeya,
16:50 who's nearly six years older than me
16:52 and who Papa used to meet at St. John's
16:55 and Papa used to meet at Cambridge and so on,
16:58 mine was a much more intimate relationship,
17:01 not of building, but he very much wanted me to go to IIM.
17:04 And he would promise me that the minute you finish IIM,
17:07 I will resign my job in the government
17:10 and you and I will go across the country
17:12 understanding the pulse and starting institutions
17:15 that will catapult and leapfrog the poorest of the poor
17:19 into places of dignity, into places of empowerment.
17:23 And that is why when he passed away the day
17:26 before I took my IIM entrance exam,
17:28 I was completely devastated.
17:30 For me, there was no way forward.
17:32 - And to conclude, some of, for me,
17:35 I know it's perhaps a bit naive to ask it,
17:38 but some of, for me, the image of Vikram on the moon.
17:43 There is a lander named Vikram
17:45 sitting on the moon as we speak.
17:47 - For me, Papa is somebody
17:51 who would come out of the dining room.
17:53 There would be one student or a secretary waiting
17:56 who would get into the car.
17:58 He would drive to the station.
17:59 Another student was waiting there
18:01 who would get in in Ahmedabad and get off at Baroda.
18:03 There was a third student waiting in Baroda
18:06 who would get in in Baroda and get off in Surat.
18:08 There was another person waiting
18:10 as he got off in Bombay Central and so on and so forth.
18:16 (silence)
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