Sunita Williams at Ahmedabad!

Indian-American Astronaut Ms. Sunita Williams was felicitated by various institutions and important bodies at Ahmedabad when she came here during September. On September 22, 2007 I was also invited to attend one of those felicitation programmes organised by Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) Ahmedabad. I got two passes and with one pass two persons can enter. So, I went with my sister Awmawmi and my colleague Ravi Rawal. I was impressed to find that GCCI had invited students from schools across the city and the hall was full of them instead of Government officials and VIPs. I was particularly impressed by the keenness of Sunita Williams to interact with those school kids (which however did not happened; it seems like teachers had collected the questions beforehand and one of them asked the questions directly to Sunita on behalf of all ) and the way she encouraged them as well the way she tried to change their perspective [Watch the video below to listen to those :) ]!!

Sunita Williams was born on September 19, 1965 at Ohio as Sunita Pandya. Her father Dr. Deepak Pandya is a Gujarati (Hindu) while her mother Bonnie Pandya is a Slovenian (Catholic). While listening to the Indian spiritual leaders, she also used to attend Roman Catholic church.

Sunita williams set the record for the longest stay by a woman in space (195 days) and also created another milestone by creating a world record for females with four spacewalks totaling 29 hours and 17 minutes.When she went to space, apart from other things, she took along with her Ganesh idol, the Gita and samosas. Here is a video of her speech taken with my digital camera (Canon Powershot A620) from a distance.