Astronaut Shukla Inspires Students at Pune Festival

“As kids, when we go to school, our identity is defined by our home and family, our parents. When we go to college, our identity is defined by which school we have come from. When you leave our own city and move to another, our identity is defined by our native city – like someone is from Pune, I am from Lucknow etc. When you leave our own country and move to another country, our identity is defined by our country. When I was in the US for a year, I was representing India. And an extension of it when we leave our planet and go into space, our planet becomes our sense of identity and the entire earth becomes our home – not a particular country, region, place or a city. And that is an extremely strong feeling. To look at the entire world as one entity and that we are in this together, is a very unique perspective that I carried back to the earth after my mission.”

“when you want to go to the moon, you will have to compete with me. I will still be in the race. What I want to say is, possibilities are endless, in 1984, Wing Commander Rakest Sharma travelled to space. I was not even there because I was born in 1985. When growing up, I used to listen to his stories, his mission. But the thought of becoming an astronaut never occurred to me because we did not have a programme. But I can very proudly tell you that this time, after I went to space, many children have asked me how they can become astronauts. So today, becoming an astronaut is no more a dream, it is now reality. There is a profession called astronaut in India now and it is open to all. Possibilities are endless. But for that you have to commit, promise to me that you will work hard in that direction.”