Number of words: 172

Towards the end of my visit, I went to the Wallops flight facility at Wallops Island in East coast, Virginia. This place was the base for NASA’s sounding rocket program. Here I saw a painting prominently displayed in the reception lobby. It depicted a battle scene with a few rockets flying in the background. A painting with this theme should be the most common place thing at a flight facility, but the painting caught my attention because the soldiers on the side launching the rockets were not white coloured, but dark skinned, with the racial features of people found in South Asia. My curiosity got the better of me, drawing me towards the painting. It turned out to be Tipu Sultan’s army fighting the British. The painting depicted a fact forgotten in Tipu’s own country, but commemorated on the other side of the planet. I was happy to see an Indian glorified by NASA as a hero of warfare rocketry.

Excerpted from pages 37-38 of ‘Wings of Fire’ by APJ Abdul Kalam