Dribbling Through the Stars
A Fighter Pilot's Journey Home
I was sweating, though I was in my t-shirt and shorts, and it was morning. The clunky fan in my college hostel canteen always made this awful squeaking sound, reminding me to be alert lest it fell off the ceiling. Despite that din, I could hear a faint call of a cuckoo, its "paus aala, paus aala" promising rain in Marathi, maybe a sweet alert before the monsoon mess that regularly disrupts the city. Exams were on, and I was repeating a course, so the hostel was empty, with only a few miserable folks around. I was well into my morning ritual of reading my newspaper with tea and some biscuits in Munna's canteen, the newspaper providing an escape from the mindless mugging that was soon to follow.
The headline was short: "A Mig 21 pilot dies in an air crash."
I was halfway through the Times of India when I read that small left-hand page 30 cc new snippet, buried among advertisements and smaller stories as if it wasn't carrying the weight of a world ending. The teacup fell and smashed into many pieces as I suddenly jerked the paper towards me, the sound of breaking ceramic cutting through the morning quiet. I reread it, could not believe it, and read it many more times. The pilot was my childhood friend Sujit. We had moved from Mumbai to Delhi, sharing the sprawling lanes of Chanakyapuri colony as our playground. He was an accomplished boxer and football player, and his natural athleticism was evident in everything he did. We didn't talk much - didn't need to, really - but we did almost everything together. We recently made a trip to Pune together. I had never cried openly in my hostel canteen before, but today, the tears came out in a flood. He was 23; his life was still to be lived.
Like an old video cassette recorder, I found myself rewinding my life with him. The tape refers back to our school years in Delhi. The tenth standard board exams were significant in our time; they were essential markers of who you were and could become. The results were out, and we were at the school. We rushed towards the notice board that had our marks. I did well, and he didn't. I felt terrible that I was feeling good about his 10th results not being so good. He returned from the notice board and sat in the corridor outside the room. I came out to be with him, and I remember the surprise at seeing him cry! This was my strong friend who could knock out opponents in the boxing ring and who commanded the football field like a general. He was always the hero. I had spent countless evenings watching him dribble the ball from one end of the Chanakyapuri field to the other, leaving defenders lunging at shadows, his movements as precise as they would later be in his fighter jet. The respect I got because I was his friend was something I remembered so well - the quiet nods from seniors who knew us as a pair, even though I was just the sidekick to his sporting heroics. And so my hero not doing well also meant that I was better than him at something, at least!
He recovered from that and showed his caliber by getting admission to the NDA in a few years. The tape moved ahead to a few years after his graduation; he was a uniformed Air Force officer now, with the same quiet determination in his eyes that I had seen on the football field. He had just bought a motorcycle, the Bullet, with an unmistakable engine rumble. We inaugurated his bike by setting off one morning for Pune from Mumbai. I sat pillion on his Bullet on the Mumbai-Pune ghat, and he rode slowly and carefully. He kept telling me about his new girlfriend. Frustrated because I don’t have one, I blurted out, "Boss, you are a fighter pilot; you are riding this bullet like a bullock cart." He didn't hear me as the wind was sharp, so I leaned into him and shouted close to his helmet; he heard me then. At the next stop, he turned back and said, with that familiar half-smile I had known since our Delhi days, "Ajay, if you are a good fighter pilot, you are so trained in safety that you cannot drive rashly, bullet ho ya MIG."
Soon, he got transferred, and we didn't meet for two years. He had been transferred to a fighter base in Tezpur, Assam. He had specialized in low-level sorties to evade radar. He was a fighter pilot making waves, destined to grow - just as he had been destined to lead since those boxing matches and football games in Chanakyapuri. The tape moves forward. It is late December, and life at my engineering college was fun. A few inter-collegiate festivals were happening, and that was our only chance to meet girls, so we were all excited. Those days, we didn't have mobile phones; a cracked-up phone booth at our hostel entrance was our only way to communicate. When that phone rang, a hundred hopeful ears waited to be called by the watchman.
I get a call late at night—very late past 1 a.m. It was Sujit saying, with that familiar excitement in his voice that I remembered from our school victories, "You will never believe what happened?". I had been woken up to take that call, so I growled back, "Kya hua, koi mar gaya kya(who died)." Sujit said, "You remember How I told you that I could impress air hostesses by showing my Armed Forces ID card." I was too sleepy to entertain this, so I said, "Paka mat yaar, don't bug me; I am going back to sleep." He said, "No, no wait, you have to hear this." He asked me, "Whose poster do you have on your bookshelf?". We were both die-hard fans of Sanjana Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor's daughter - a crush that had started in our Delhi days when we'd sneak into movie theaters together. My curiosity piqued, and I said, "You know it's Sanjana." He said she was sitting next to him on the flight, and though he couldn't impress the air hostess with his armed forces card, it got him talking with Sanjana. And now he said, with that same boyish enthusiasm I remembered from our school days, "I got dropped off by Sanjana at my Air Force mess from the airport; she wants to know more about my fighter sorties; my day is made; now you go back to sleep."
The memory reel spins wildly now, like a tape fast-forwarding to its most painful scene. One moment, I hear his excited voice about Sanjana, and the next, I'm back in Munna's canteen, the half-drunk tea growing cold, the morning newspaper unread, and the teacup broken on the floor. The cuckoo has fallen silent. Even the squeaking fan seems muted as the emotional roller coaster inside hurtles on. Time moves in a blur from here - the autorickshaw ride to Matunga station, then the rapid train ride to Churchgate.
The morning was heavy with unseasonal humidity as I arrived at his house at Churchgate & then at the electric crematorium at Girgaun. His commanding officer called me aside at the crematorium before the ceremony. He knew about our friendship - perhaps Sujit had spoken about our Delhi days and shared history. He said he knew how close I was to Sujit and gave me his Air Force cap and some belongings. His voice dropped to almost a whisper as he said it was a low-altitude Mig-21 flight that crashed, and due to the intense heat, nothing else was left of Sujit. "I cannot say this to his family, but there is not much of him left in the coffin." At that moment, all I could think of was the agile boxer, the nimble footballer, the boy who moved through life with such grace - now reduced to ashes.
It's been 40 years since the above story unfolded. My life continues. I had my battles and my scars, but I lived. When I think of Sujit, I think of how I cared so deeply for him that I carry him in my heart forever - not just the pilot he became, but the quiet, strong friend who shared my childhood in Chanakyapuri's leafy lanes. My superpower is to have known people like Sujit and to have been able to count him as my friend. To be a friend and to live and connect with others deeply are my superpowers. I have them, and I wish to use them more often.
And yet, memories are strange things. They come unbidden. Sometimes, a whiff of aviation fuel at an airport brings him back. Or the distant roar of a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier. Small things trigger big memories - the smell of grass after rain that takes me back to our football field in Chanakyapuri, the sound of boxing gloves hitting a punching bag in a gym somewhere.
I dream of him sometimes. Not the uniformed officer but the schoolboy who cried over his marks. The friend who rode his Bullet carefully through mountain roads. The excited voice on a late-night call about meeting Sanjana Kapoor. The boy who could knock out opponents in the ring but would always help them up afterward. These are the moments that stay crystal clear while other memories fade.
Sometime back on TV, I watched an Air Force Day parade. I watched young pilots soar overhead. Newer fighters have replaced their MiGs, but the spirit remains the same. In each of them, I see a bit of Sujit—that same fierce pride, love for the skies, the same determination I used to see in his eyes before every boxing match. (Sujit is the guy on the right, with our friend Sudhir Hastak, also a pilot)
I was at Pangong Lake in Ladakh forty years after Sujit's accident. In the mess tent at our campsite, I met Squadron Leader Rakesh. We connected over Old Monk rum - though I stopped at one drink, respecting the 4,300-metre altitude. It may have been Rakesh's physique that reminded me of Sujit, the way he carried himself with that quiet confidence I had known since our school days. Or it was simply that I hadn't met an Air Force person in years. Whatever it was, I felt an instant camaraderie with him. For 45 minutes, I sat captivated by his life stories in the Air Force until someone called us out to see the Milky Way.
That night, standing under the vast Ladakhi sky, watching the stars scatter like diamond dust across the pitch-black sky, I could almost see Sujit up there. In my mind's eye, he was still young, still agile, dribbling his way past wily defender stars, playing his eternal game in the cosmic field above, just as he used to weave through defenders on our childhood playground.
(Sujit is second from the right without a blazer; maybe there is a story in that, though I don’t know it)
Some friendships don't end with death. They change form. This old photograph of young Sujit, taken just after he joined his squadron at Tezpur, lives in my Google Drive. I've added it to Google Photos, knowing these digital memories will surface randomly, triggering remembrances when I least expect them. In the photo, he stands tall amongst good friends, his shoulders squared with pride, but I can still see that hint of the boy from Chanakyapuri in his smile. And that's exactly how I want to remember him - forever young, forever smiling, forever my hero.
Ajay, thank you for sharing Sujit’s story with us. I will not try and write anything to comfort or empathize because I know how there is nothing that can fill some gaps. Take care 🫂
Beautifully poignant piece... transported me right through that window - you captured that moment in time perfectly. Having known Sujit made it even more special. Memories are truly our only real keepsakes - keep writing them!