My good fortune was to have worked with
three great minds. Dr.Vikram Sarabhai of the Dept. of Space, Professor
Satish Dhawan, who succeeded him and Dr.Brahm Prakash, father of nuclear
material. I was lucky to have worked with all three of them closely and
consider this the great opportunity of my life. I see four milestones in
my career. Twenty years I spent in ISRO. I was given the opportunity to
be the project director of India’s first satellite launch vehicle, SLV3.
The one that launched Rohini. These years played a very important role
in my life of scientist. After my ISRO, I joined DRDO and got a chance to
be a part of India’s guided missile program. It was my second bliss when
Agni met its mission requirements in 1994. The Dept. of Atomic Energy and
DRDO had this tremendous partnership in the recent nuclear tests, on May
11 and 13. This was the third bliss. The joy of participating with my team
in these nuclear tests and proving to the world that India can make it, that
we are no longer developing nation but one of them. It made me feel proud
as an Indian. The fact that we have now developed for Agni a re-entry structure,
for which we have developed this new material. A very light material called
carbon-carbon. One day an orthopedic surgeon from Nizam Institute of Medical
Sciences visited my laboratory. He lifted the material and found it so light
that he took me to his hospital and showed me his patients. There were
little girls and boys with heavy metallic calipers weighing over three Kg.
Each, dragging their feet around. He said to me: Please remove the pain
of my patients. In three weeks, we made these Floor reaction Orthosis 300-gram
calipers and took them to the orthopedic center. The children didn’t believe
their eyes. From dragging around a three kg. load on their legs, they could
now move around! Their parents had tears in their eyes. That was my fourth
bliss!
