In June 2024, a human space mission caught global attention and led to a media frenzy in India. The Boeing Starliner spacecraft was launched on 5 June for a ten-day rendezvous with the ISS. This was the first crewed flight of Starliner and was meant to validate its performance, safety and reliability as a space transport system.
Its return journey, however, had to be postponed for several months as the spacecraft experienced a helium leak and problems with its thrusters during the docking with ISS, and astronauts needed time to fix them. Starliner returned to Earth in September 2024 but without its two passengers as NASA did not want to take any risks. Another spacecraft was arranged for the crew of Starliner.
On the Starliner flight were two experienced NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams. Sunita’s participation in the flight evoked great interest in India owing to her Indian connection – she is only the second woman astronaut of Indian descent to fly into space. Kalpana Chawla was the first. Sunita’s space career started after Kalpana’s, but she broke many records in space.
During her two long-term stays on ISS, Sunita created many records – the longest continuous space flight by a woman (192 days), the highest number of spacewalks (seven) by a woman astronaut and the longest spacewalk time for a woman (50 hours, 40 minutes). She became the second woman ever to command the ISS. All these achievements made Sunita a household name in India though she was not born or educated in the country like Kalpana.
Also read: Why the Bhagavad Gita is set on a battlefield—it has nothing to do with violence
Tracing the Roots
During a visit to India, Sunita was asked about her role models. She said, ‘The people who have inspired me the most are my parents – my father coming from India and my mother coming from not well-to-do family in midwestern America. Both went through a lot of struggles in their lives and have given everything they have had to my brother, my sister and myself, and have been amazing role models for us in morally, mentally, and physically what to do in life.’
She considered herself lucky to have grown up in a multicultural environment, which she felt helped in shaping her space career during which she worked with the Russians on projects for building the ISS. We will further discuss ISS later.
Sunita’s story represents the typical emigrant tale. She was born to Deepak Pandya, who immigrated to America in search of greener pastures, and Ursuline Bonnie Zalokar of Slovenian descent (Bonnie’s grandmother came to America in the early 1900s). Deepak, a freshly minted doctor, arrived in America by the sea route, which took twenty-one days, met Bonnie, an X-ray technician, in his first job and got married to her. The two worked hard to raise three children and gave them a good education so that they could live the American dream. Bonnie was born and raised in Cleveland where the Zalokar family ran a delicatessen.
Deepak Pandya, born in a village called Jhulasan in the Mehsana District of Gujarat, got his medical degrees (MBBS and MD) from Gujarat University in 1957 and completed an internship at the Sheth Vadilal Sarabhai Hospital in Ahmedabad. He went to America when he got an offer for an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. After a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroanatomy, he was set on the path to becoming a leading expert in this field globally. He studied principles underlying brain organisation and published about 600 original research papers, monographs and books.
After he died in 2020 at the age of eighty-seven, the Journal of Comparative Neurology brought out a special issue in his honour, and Boston University, where he was emeritus professor of anatomy and neurobiology, organised a memorial symposium. His colleagues affectionately called him Dee.
Sunita, Suni to her family and friends, was born in Euclid, Ohio, on 19 September 1965. When she was three, her family moved to Needham, Massachusetts, near Boston. Sunita was the youngest of three siblings. The eldest was Jay, followed by Dina. Sunita went to elementary, middle and high school in Needham, graduating in 1983. In her school days, she loved many sports – swimming, triathlon, biking, baseball, football, basketball and hockey.
The Pandya household was multicultural and multifaith, values which Sunita, too, imbibed. Deepak was a gentle and spiritual person, a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and a believer in the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. The family went to the local church on Sundays. Both Diwali and Christmas were celebrated with equal enthusiasm. Deepak would often narrate stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to his children in their growing-up years. Given Bonnie’s interest in baking and Deepak’s love for Gujarati dishes, food was almost a family activity. Sunita likes pani puri and samosa (which were among the snacks she consumed in space). Her husband can make samosas, while her mother makes jalebis.
This multicultural upbringing was reflected in the memorabilia that Sunita took with her on her first space journey in 2007 – a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a statue of Ganesha and a St Christopher medallion (a Catholic symbol of protection and safe travel). ‘Those were the things that were a part of our life when we were growing up. It was natural for me to take a part of my life with me to space. I took a little something from my father and some things from my mother,’ she told an interviewer.
The Pandyas shared a love for outdoor activities and sports, such as hiking, camping, windsurfing, swimming, skiing, soccer and tennis. The kids also got lessons in piano,
ballet dancing and so on. Sunita was good at competitive swimming and ran the Boston Marathon when she was sixteen, without any preparation. All three siblings took lessons and practised swimming at the Harvard pool under the legendary coach Joe Bernal. The Pandya kids joined Bernal’s swim club, Bernal’s Gators. Sunita was also a swimming instructor for special-needs children.
Deepak Pandya and his family remained connected with relatives and friends in India. Sunita visited Gujarat in 1998 when her cousin Haren Pandya (Haren’s mother is Deepak Pandya’s sister) was elected member of the Legislative Assembly on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket. ‘Sunita has been emotionally attached to Haren. In fact, in 1998 she had come from the US to campaign for Haren and had participated in his victory procession. She was so thrilled to see the large turnout,’ Haren’s father, Vitthalbhai, was quoted as saying in newspaper reports in September 2007 when Sunita visited Ahmedabad after her space flight.
This excerpt from Dinesh C Sharma’s ‘Space: The India Story’ has been published with permission from Bloomsbury Publishing.