My fear of take-offs and landings
I’m okay with flying, in fact, even slight turbulences from clouds and rain doesn’t really bother me. What I really don’t like is take-off and landing. I’ll tell you why.
Back in 2003, when I was a wee 11-year-old, one of the hottest pieces of news was about Kalpana Chawla being the first woman of Indian to fly to space. It was a HUGE deal. The local Tamil news, and the Indian channels we watched over cable paraded her and her story. As yet another under stimulated kid who chose to read books about space and ancient civilisations instead of actually doing homework, I was fascinated by this. You mean the swirly images of galaxies in books? She’s going there? I had sparkly eyes that could rival an anime character.
There was recast after recast about how she had already flown to space before in 1997, which for some reason didn’t get as much coverage back then. I guess sometimes people need a minute to truly grasp the extent of a matter at hand. You can start on one channel and seamlessly watch as you surfed through other channels about how incredible this was, an honour, an achievement, an inspiration, an historic moment, and all the superlatives, praise, and esteem you can imagine. They flaunted how she had been the only girl in her aeronautical engineering class. They parroted how she had said, “You are just your intelligence.” in space during her first mission. I classified 1997 to 2003 as a “minute”; it took me several minutes to finally wrap my head around this sentence.
Few found it necessary to state she was not the first Indian in space, arguing about “first” and “Indian”; she was an Indian-American flying on a US mission, a man had flown to space representing India on a Soviet mission in the eighties already anyway, etc. I’m sure you’re familiar with such comparisons so I’ll spare you the details. Somehow, they didn’t matter to me as a kid. As an adult, I can tell you the latter’s achievement should not be trivialised, it’s just that Kalpana’s story means more to me.
The story of this woman from a middle-class family in India whose dreams of flying brought her to the USA when she was just 20, who achieved her dreams of flying, and maybe, pushed herself to dream just a little more by joining the NASA Astronaut Corps when she was 33. The story of this woman who made history as the first Indian woman in space at 35. The ages at which she achieved these milestones bear heavier implications for me as I get closer to these ages and so, my admiration becomes greater. If you ask me, India before and after the world of IT engineering is significantly different, undergoing huge cultural shifts. It may seem there’s still so much to do, but I vividly remember wearing t-shirt and pants when I was 11 in my village in India and getting pointed at and laughed by kids of similar age because “girls don’t wear pants”. Two decades on, I see girls wearing leggings and t-shirts in the same village, with no one batting an eye. And so, for me, Kalpana’s story seems that much more formidable.
Alas, the Space Shuttle Colombia Kalpana Chawla was on disintegrated upon re-entry, killing her and the six others with her onboard. Just like that – a snap of a finger, a snip of the puppet strings. And it’s an extrapolated memory of this that’s caused my fear of take-off and landing. The way I remembered seeing this on the news for a long, long, time was the distinct explosion of a spaceship; the front catching on fire as it explodes. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I decided to Google this in the interest of distortions in memory – my brain had hit 10 to 100x zoom on something that’s not quite there.
Two decades on, I still think about Kalpana Chawla, her dreams, and her life. Often – not every time I fly, but enough. But, something clicked in me recently. You see, I was seeing it all as someone pressing pause, unfairly so, on Kalpana’s story when she was a month shy of 41. It’s a story of undeniable sorrow, yes, and my heart still twists every time I hear or see her name. But it’s also a story of dogged determination, and a source of inspiration; Kalpana Chawla must not be forgotten. Not everyone can say they have clocked a long month in space. She can. And because she could, she inspires people to believe they can as well. Maybe the next few times fear takes over during take-off or landing I should remember women like Kalpana Chawla who have shown the importance of trusting your instincts and working towards your dreams til they become tangible. Almost everything else is random and arbitrary, anyway.
“The path from dreams to success does exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get on to it, and the perseverance to follow it.” - Kalpana Chawla
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