SOARING STAR

How Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla became the face of India's return to space

- BY PUJA AWASTHI

THE PHONE CALL came one morning in 2024. Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla's voice was calm as he told his parents something that would change everything: he had been selected as the prime mission pilot for the commercial crew flight to the International Space Station.

For a moment, time stood still. But this was not the first time their son had left them speechless. “Twice in my life, time had seemed to stop,” Shubhanshu would later tell 400 spellbound students at his old school. He was reflecting on moments that shaped him. The first came when returning home after an exam, only to find his mathematics teacher's scooter in the yard. He was worried that he had not done well, and failed his parents. Shubhanshu always had high expectations about himself. The second was in a fighter jet, pulling too steeply, with death waiting below.

What did those moments teach him? When you are completely committed to what you are doing, you can bend time itself.

“Whatever you want, you have to earn,” his parents, Shambhu Dayal, 73, and Asha, 68, used to tell their three children. They knew what they were talking about—they had built everything from nothing but determination and an unwavering partnership. In the Shukla household in Lucknow, dreams were not handed out. They had to be worked for. Their youngest son seemed to understand that better than anyone. While his sisters, Nidhi and Suchi, would hesitate before asking for permission to go out, Shubhanshu was different.

Nidhi recalls a story that perhaps explains how her little brother ended up heading for space. “He would come home late from cricket and papa would be furious. I would ask him, ‘Gunjan, aren't you afraid?’ What he told me, I have never forgotten: ‘I was in the game at that moment. Had I thought about what papa would say, I would not have been able to give my 100 per cent there.’” Gunjan—meaning the chirping of birds—is what everyone calls Shubhanshu at home.