“Saare Jahan Se Accha” was what Rakesh Sharma, the first and only Indian citizen to travel to space, said when erstwhile Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked what India looked like from space. This quote, from Iqbal’s eponymous poem, is also the name of an upcoming Hindi biopic about the space traveller’s life.

Formerly a pilot with the Indian Air Force holding the rank of a wing commander, Rakesh Sharma flew into space over three decades ago aboard the Russian Soyuz T-11 along with two Russian cosmonauts. He was selected on 20th September 1982 to become a cosmonaut and was trained for 18 months for the eight-day trip. Sharma’s main line of work while in space was conducting experiments in the fields of biomedicine, remote sensing and material science. Six months before the launch, he dropped the fitness regime that the other cosmonauts were following and did intensive yoga, so as to conduct exercises to study the effects of yoga on the body during weightlessness. Thus, he also became the first person to practice yoga in space.

Sharma, along with his Russian colleagues, were conferred with the honour of the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Ashoka Chakra – India’s highest peacetime gallantry award – on their return from space. Retiring with the rank of a wing commander, he joined Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bangalore and served as its Chief Test Pilot until he stopped flying in 2001.

At a time when India looks ahead to 2022 to launch its first manned space mission (Gaganyaan), looking back to 1984 becomes inevitable, especially since he remains the only Indian to have travelled to space. Astronaut Kalpana Chawla, who was the first Indian-born woman to fly into space, lost her life along with six others when Space Shuttle Columbia crashed on its re-entry into earth’s atmosphere in 2003.

He recently remarked that since his journey into space, he has come to look at the earth in a different way. “The Earth appears fragile and defenceless in the harsh environment of space and when one sees the amount of technology required to keep a human alive in that environment, one begins to feel blessed that one is an inhabitant of planet Earth that supports human life. This gives rise to the concern that we are not doing enough to preserve the life-giving environment of Earth.”

Rakesh Sharma, the biggest pioneer of Indian space exploration, will be coming as a speaker for the Think Again Conclave in APOGEE-2019.