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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)
18:18 (silence)
18:20 (silence)
18:22 (silence)
18:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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