Farce and friction over an Indian astronaut
When we met Mr [Morarji] Desai, he was totally relaxed even after the long journey from Delhi. Squatting on a carpet in the Kremlin and spinning his favourite charka, he received us very gracefully an…
Vikram Sarabhai
8 posts
Looking (only) for Nehru
I have a habit of watching one old Tamil film a day. Yesterday evening, I was watching a film released in 1987, called Ivargal Indiyargal ('They Are Indians'). In a scene in the film, an offic…
Review of a review: 'Rocket Boys' (2022)
Tanul Thakur has reviewed a series on SonyLIV called Rocket Boys for The Wire. I haven't watched the show and don't plan to, for want of time as well as because, reading Thakur's review, I…
A great discussion on the history of India's tech.
On February 27, the Bangalore International Centre and Carnegie India hosted a panel discussion around Midnight Machines, the new book by Arun Mohan Sukumar that traces the interplay of technology and…
Chandrayaan 2 and the Left
Since after September 7, when the Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan 2 mission failed to touchdown on the lunar surface, many writers and thinkers on the political left have been adopting a stance of th…
Discovering Vikram Sarabhai
I just read through a collection of Vikram Sarabhai's important speeches and papers compiled by members of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, to pick a suitable portion to excerpt…
An award that isn't
ISRO just put out a call for a one-time space journalism award, named for Vikram Sarabhai, with a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh. Here's the doc with all the details. Pay attention to (4), where it says…
A useful book to have around
India's Rise as a Space Power is a book by Prof. Udupi Ramachandra Rao, former Chairman, ISRO (1988-1994), that provides some useful historical context of the space research organization from a sc…