No, this post is not what you are thinking about. It is not about “the” Ravish who is in the news these days – the television anchor Ravish Kumar of NDTV.
No, I am talking about Ravish Malhotra.
“Ravish who?” you ask.
So let me throw out another name: Rakesh Sharma. Remember him? He is India’s first and only cosmonaut. He flew on the Russian spacecraft Soyuz T-11, which docked with the Salyut-7 space station in 1984. From space, Rakesh Sharma spoke to then-PM Indira Gandhi, who asked him how India looked from outer space. The conversation was shown live on Doordarshan, and all Indians heard Sharma’s response: “Saare jahaan se accha.” It was a moment of great pride for Indians. Rakesh Sharma even did experiments on doing yoga in outer space. (Yes, surprisingly for some, the importance of yoga was not discovered in 2014.)
Rakesh Sharma returned home to a hero’s welcome. His face was everywhere, he was interviewed on TV and in magazines. He was invited to give inspirational talks and booked for lecture tours. He continued in the Indian Air Force and played an important role test-flying the Tejas aircraft.
But my post is not about Rakesh Sharma. It is about Ravish Malhotra.
Who is Ravish Malhotra? He is the other Air Force pilot who was chosen to be part of the Indo-Soviet space program. Like his colleague, Rakesh Sharma, Ravish Malhotra also trained for two years in Russia, learning Russian, practicing zero gravity flights, and preparing for a landing in the ocean after returning from space. Only, Malhotra never went to space.
He was Rakesh Sharma’s backup. In case anything were to happen to Sharma, Malhotra would take his place in the flight. Nothing happened to Sharma, so the backup option was never used. The decision to have Sharma go into space and Malhotra be the backup was taken midway through their two-year training program in Russia.
So, despite all the training to go into space, Malhotra never did. There was no hero’s welcome for him, no meeting the PM and President, no lecture tours, no magazine covers, no TV appearances. Nobody even remembered his name.
Yet Malhotra was never bitter about it. Disappointed, yes. He continued with the Air Force for another ten years and took early retirement in 1995. Post retirement, he had a successful stint as a businessman with a defence-oriented company called Dynamatic Technologies, a precision engineering company making parts for global clients.
So I wish I had the equanimity of that Ravish Malhotra has had in his life. That I have the courage to carry on in life no matter what disappointments it throws at me.
For, tomorrow is another day.
As Rudyard Kipling says in his classic poem, “If,”
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
..
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
