Rhapsodizing SHAR

During my trip to the Sriharikota Range(SHAR) earlier this month, I felt proud for one reason and humble and insignificant for many more. Yes, India's only satellite launch station, to me, is home to engineering marvels. I am proud because my nation is now self-sufficient with regards to space technology, thanks to people like Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan etc., the pioneers in this field. I feel humbled and insignificant because my education (undergrad earlier and postgrad now), has contributed little on such scales. A sea of difference separates people like me who, until recently, took pride in making designs on computers and showing them in different colors and perspectives, deriving approximate empirical relationships between invisible parameters typing away pages and pages of code after making a million assumptions, and those who put things into practice. Engineering is what I call the latter. Maybe I am getting a little sentimental about the entire trip, but I don't find anything wrong. After having been brought up in a sealed shell during the tenure of my undergraduate education and completing one more year of postgraduate education in a branded shell called the IIT, witnessing such feats was just enthralling. The transition period between UG and PG involved an year's work as design engineer in one of the leading industries in India. That was where I felt like an engineer for the first time. After this trip, that feeling seems to have vanished too.

I have blogged on trivial themes and I would be doing injustice if I did not write on this trip that made me feel so small. Here I go...