The Historic Rakesh Sharma-Indira Gandhi Chat

On this day 35 years ago, Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to go to space. He had this chat with Indira Gandhi from a Soviet space station.

Transcript

00:00How do you see India from above?

00:04I can say without any hesitation that India is better than any other country.

01:00Rakesh Sharma, Squadron Leader

01:25leader Rakesh Sharma, the whole nation is focused on you and we all congratulate you.

01:34This is a historic step and I hope that this will make our country aware of the space.

01:43And at the same time, our youth will be inspired to work courageously.

01:48I have a lot of questions for you, but I will ask a few.

01:53Your training on the ground was very difficult and a similar environment was created as it is in space.

02:02Now that you are actually in space, is the situation the same or is it different?

02:09First of all, I would like to thank you for being a citizen of India.

02:17My crew members also thank you for your congratulations.

02:24As you said, the training of Radheesh Malhotra and me was very difficult.

02:35But now we know that the training we received was necessary.

02:44Because when our docking maneuver was done without any difficulty,

02:51we felt as if we were sitting in a simulator.

02:56So this tells us that the hard training that was done was necessary,

03:02because of which we were able to do successful docking without any difficulty.

03:08How does India look from above?

03:12Without any hesitation, I can say that it is better than any other country.