SHUX AND BLUE MARBLE

THE 18 DAYS IN SPACE MIGHT HAVE MADE HIM A HOUSEHOLD NAME, BUT GROUP CAPTAIN SHUBHANSHU SHUKLA IS AS GROUNDED AS EVER. AND BEFORE HE SUITS UP FOR HIS NEXT MISSION, THE WEEK'S MAN OF THE YEAR SHARES STORIES FROM HIS LIFE AND SPACE, INCLUDING HOW HE BECAME A 'WATER BENDER'

- NIRMAL JOVIAL AND ABHINAV SINGH

We were suspended midair!

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, his wife, Kamna, four of us from THE WEEK and an associate of ours stood inside a lift that had abruptly abandoned its climb. Our destination was the second floor of the ISRO quarters in Bengaluru. The metal box, built to hold eight people or 544kg, had just seven of us, yet there we were, trapped in a silent shaft, waiting for it to resume its climb. Someone quipped: “Looks like this might be your first lift interview... right here in this claustrophobic space.” Shubhanshu smiled and shrugged it off, saying, “Oh... this is quite comfortable.”

A stalled lift could go into free fall, a moment when gravity becomes the only force in charge. And there we were with a man who has lived through perhaps the most dramatic version of that physics lesson—the International Space Station itself, a far larger metal box constantly in free fall, hurtling around earth at 28,000kmph.

Shubhanshu calmly called security, who alerted the technicians. Not for a moment did he—or Kamna, his strongest support system—show a flicker of tension. Instead, they joked about the strange welcome they had ended up giving us. When the doors finally slid open, the Air Force officer shifted instinctively into command mode: "Be careful when you step out. Move quickly." He waited till each of us had exited before stepping out.