We were suspended mid-air!
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, his wife, Kamna, four of us from THE WEEK and an associate of ours stood inside a lift that had abruptly abandoned its climb. Our destination was the second floor of the ISRO quarters in Bengaluru. The metal box, built to hold eight people or 544kg, had just seven of us, yet there we were, trapped in a silent shaft, waiting for it to resume its climb. Someone quipped: “Looks like this might be your first lift interview… right here in this claustrophobic space.” Shubhanshu smiled and shrugged it off, saying, “Oh… this is quite comfortable.”
A stalled lift could go into free fall, a moment when gravity becomes the only force in charge. And there we were with a man who has lived through perhaps the most dramatic version of that physics lesson—the International Space Station itself, a far larger metal box constantly in free fall, hurtling around earth at 28,000kmph.
Shubhanshu calmly called security, who alerted the technicians. Not for a moment did he—or Kamna, his strongest support system—show a flicker of tension. Instead, they joked about the strange welcome they had ended up giving us. When the doors finally slid open, the Air Force officer shifted instinctively into command mode: “Be careful when you step out. Move quickly.” He waited till each of us had exited before stepping out.
A macramé dream catcher hung above some potted plants on the ground, with climbing money plants guarding the entry to the Shukla home. Two stuffed, cloth owls hung on the wall, with the residents’ names stitched on to them: the left one read ‘Shux’ and the right one, ‘Kamna’. A few meditating Buddha figurines added to the calm. “Someone told me it will bring peace,” said Kamna. Inside, in the showcase, we noticed a wooden reclining Buddha. “We got that from Bali. When I saw it, my reaction was: ‘Oh! That is such a peaceful Buddha’,” she added.
In a way, Shubhanshu—the first Indian to go to the ISS, for 18 days—is like that tranquil Buddha. At least when it comes to sleep. Astronauts often speak of “weightless” dreams, even nightmares, shaped by the mind and microgravity. There is also the strange phenomenon of ‘retinal flashes’, when high-energy cosmic rays trigger the retina, producing bursts of light—seen even with eyes closed—which can disrupt sleep.
Up above the world so high: Shubhanshu on board the International Space Station | NASA
But Shubhanshu says that he slept soundly on the ISS and added, with characteristic humility, that crews who stay six months or more experience an entirely different level of physiological strain.
“Even before, he slept so soundly—tired after the gym, flying, everything—that he hardly had any sleep disturbances or dreams,” said Kamna.
But dreams also hold the heavier meaning of one’s ambitions. So, when we sat down for a long chat, our first question was whether becoming an astronaut was a childhood dream. “Short answer: no,” he said. “India’s first astronaut, Rakesh Sharma, flew in 1984; I was born in 1985. I wasn’t around when it happened, but we grew up hearing his stories, seeing his images and reading about his messages from space in our schoolbooks. I was deeply impressed and fascinated by his journey, but the thought of becoming an astronaut never found a place in my mind because our country didn’t have a human space programme then.”
The youngest of the three children of Lucknow-based Shambhu Dayal and Asha, Shubhanshu grew up in a middle-class family where anything you wanted had to be earned. With no one from the armed forces in the family, joining the services, he said, wasn’t something he had planned either.
Shubhanshu on a bike as a child
“In class 12, when everyone was discussing engineering, medicine and civil services, a group of friends decided to apply for the NDA (National Defence Academy) because it was prestigious. One of my friends didn’t fill the form, so I filled it, almost accidentally,” said Shubhanshu, who cleared the written exam, interview and medical before his board exam. That is when the thought of becoming a fighter pilot took final shape.
The spark, though, goes further back. In class six, he watched fighter aircraft perform aerobatics at an air show; it was an image that never left him. “So, when the opportunity came to join the armed forces, I was clear that I wanted to be a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force,” he said.
Flying did become something Shubhanshu loved, but his first and forever love—Kamna—entered his life much earlier. They studied together from class 3 to 12 at City Montessori School, Aliganj. Did their romance begin in school? “No. We were both studious kids. And he was so shy,” said Kamna. Shubhanshu added that they were “good kids”, though Kamna had one complaint: “That I wouldn’t study much and still score good marks,” he said, with a laugh.
Their love blossomed after Shubhanshu joined the NDA and Kamna began her dentistry course. “You missed him then?” we asked. “He missed me more,” she said with a smile, adding that they understood their feelings for each other naturally, without any drama.
The long-distance relationship wasn’t easy, especially with the communication limits placed on an NDA cadet. “When he was there, we had just one phone call a week,” said Kamna. “I couldn’t call him; I had to wait for his call on Sunday afternoon. Mobile phones weren’t allowed then, so he would call from a PCO.”
Walking through their quarters, we stumbled upon a precious artefact from their early-2000s romance—a wooden vase with purple flowers spilling out of it, featuring a handwritten love letter from Kamna. It carried lines such as: “I dream of a life with you, my darling; of tingling hearts and moonlit nights; to feel the love in air all swarming / And bathing me with its light.”
The couple married in 2009, and have a six-year-old son, Kiash, fondly called Sid, who loves dinosaurs. We reached the Shukla household sometime after Kiash had returned from his swimming lessons. They enrolled him because they believe an active childhood lays the foundation for becoming a fine, grounded adult. Kiash is energetic and warm; every time he darted past us, he offered high-fives and eagerly explained why the Triceratops, not the T rex, was his favourite.
Games and physical activity have been an integral part of Shubhanshu’s life, too. In Lucknow, when THE WEEK spoke to the astronaut’s family, they recalled how the training at the NDA had transformed their quiet boy into a gentleman of discipline and steel. That change, they said, also reshaped the family dynamic, with the youngest gradually becoming the one everyone turned to in a crisis.
‘Gunjan’ is what his parents and sisters used to call him; the Air Force gave him the name ‘Shux’. Beyond that, the IAF also shaped him into a combat leader and seasoned test pilot with more than 2,000 hours of flight time across aircraft such as the Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Jaguar, Hawk, Dornier and An-32. He graduated from the Test Pilot School in 2018, which made him eligible to be one of the astronauts for India’s Gaganyaan mission.
Aviation, especially military flying, always has inherent risks. “My wife, having lived this life with me for so many years, understood what such assignments [including the space mission] demand,” he said. “I usually don’t explain too much to my parents; I keep things to myself so they don’t worry. But I discuss everything openly with my wife. That helps me stay at peace when I’m stepping into something like this.”
Flying to space multiplies the risks, and for Kamna, a piece of advice from Peggy Whitson—the mission commander of Axiom-4, which carried Shubhanshu to the ISS—became a quiet anchor. Whitson, who holds the records for the most cumulative days in space for NASA and the most spacewalks by a woman, told her that an astronaut never goes alone. The partner, she said, must also be fully present—living the mission, holding the anxieties and offering the steadiness that makes the journey possible. It is a partnership, a natural give-and-take. Kamna carried those words as a promise, and stood by Shubhanshu through every stage of the mission.
In 2021, when Shubhanshu was sent to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, Kamna travelled to Moscow with Kiash and stayed there for about a year. That winter was bitter, with temperatures plunging to minus 20 degrees Celsius. Shubhanshu could return home only once a week. “But I didn’t want my husband to miss Sid’s childhood, at least not all of it,” said Kamna.
Shubhanshu had basic proficiency in Russian, while Kamna said she survived with Google Translate. Even so, one can see how deeply the couple cherish their Russian memories. Their showcase displays handcrafted souvenirs—from the iconic blue-and-white Gzhel ceramics to Matryoshka dolls painted as cosmonauts.
Flight mode: Shubhanshu with the Air Force’s Surya Kiran aerobatics team.
As the wife of an Air Force officer posted frequently to remote locations, Kamna had to give up her dental practice. But after returning from Russia, she turned to something that felt both personal and purposeful—supporting Lucknow’s zardozi and aari hand-embroidery artisans. Many of them had slipped into extreme poverty during the pandemic, forced to abandon their art to work as mechanics, farmers or rickshaw drivers. Having long been connected to these communities, Kamna created an online brand named after Kiash to help restore their livelihood and dignity.
But, though she runs an online brand, Kamna said neither she nor her husband has ever been active on social media. THE WEEK found a genuine Facebook profile of Shubhanshu with just 216 friends, and the only update on it dates back to 2011—a post about the “most amazing cutlets” he had ever eaten. Under it was Kamna’s playful comment asking, “kisne khilaye? (who fed you them?)”
But since June—the month he travelled to space—Shubhanshu has been regularly sharing stories from his mission and his astrophotography. He believes it is important to share these experiences to inspire the younger generation.
He picked up astrophotography after his first phase of training in Russia, and he carried that passion to space. He hopes to hold an exhibition someday. In one post after returning, he shared a series of Orion Nebula shots he had taken, captioning it: “Slow or fast, if you keep moving, progress is guaranteed.”
Shubhanshu Shukla | Bhanu Prakash Chandra
That idea of quiet, steady progress isn’t limited to his photography. Inside the home, we found a growing library—with books ranging from those on philosophy and space travel to fiction and fantasy. Shubhanshu admitted that Kamna was the more avid reader, adding, “I picked up the habit from her. Both of us love reading.”
And he would have got more time to do so when he and the other Axiom-4 crewmembers had an extended pre-flight quarantine after a series of launch delays. He said such ambiguities were expected and built into astronaut-training programmes. Yet, there were some things even training couldn’t prepare them for—like explaining the quarantine situation to little Kiash.
Family visits were allowed, but an eight-metre distance had to be maintained between visitors and the astronauts. That strange “long-distance closeness” was especially hard for Kiash to understand. Shubhanshu and Kamna told him he had germs on his hands, and that was why he couldn’t touch his father. “Can I wash my hands?” he would ask Kamna every time Shubhanshu came to see him.
But if quarantine confused him, the night of the launch gave Kiash a moment he would carry for the rest of his life. As the 2.30am lift-off on June 25 approached, Kamna tried to prepare him for what he was about to see. And when the rocket carrying his father finally tore through the darkness, the flare was so bright that he gasped, “Mom, it looks like the sun!”
In a way, just as Kiash tried to make sense of what he saw on earth, Shubhanshu was processing his own set of unfamiliar sensations in microgravity.
“Our brains have evolved entirely in gravity. So, the first time you go to space, it’s very hard to let go of objects. In microgravity, everything is falling together—you, the pen, the station—so nothing appears to fall. But your brain doesn’t understand that at first. If I were holding a pen and needed my hands, I couldn’t simply let it go. I would instinctively look for someone to hold it for me,” he said, adding that two of his crewmates—Sławosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary, also first-timers—reacted the same way. “They would hold the object and stand next to me, even though it would have just floated there.”
It was only after a few days, he said, that the brain began to adjust. “You learn it’s perfectly fine to let go—leave objects floating around, do your work and gather them again,” he said. “It’s a major shift in how your mind interprets the world.”
As he let go of certain inhibitions, Shubhanshu unlocked some “superpowers”. One of them was becoming a “water bender”. “Handling liquids in microgravity is not easy. Astronauts have to be slow, deliberate and extremely precise,” he said. “One of my STEM demonstrations required me to create a water bubble, then inject an air bubble inside it, and then inject a coffee bubble inside the air bubble—essentially, a bubble inside a bubble inside a bubble. It’s incredibly difficult. Even the NASA astronauts on board, who had flown before, said they had never tried it because it was so complex.”
On the first day, Shubhanshu couldn’t even form a proper water bubble, let alone add the air and coffee bubbles. “It was frustrating, but I kept practising,” he said. “By the third day, I became comfortable handling fluids. Eventually, we managed to capture the triple-bubble structure. That’s why I jokingly said I had become a ‘water bender’.”
But arguably the biggest superpower he unlocked was the unconditional love he felt—not only for his family, his country or even humanity, but for the entire earth. After all, as Dr Brand says in Interstellar, “Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends the dimensions of time and space!”