Man firing rockets

DRDO scientist Dr G. Satheesh Reddy is ending 2014 on a high. Earlier this month, the Computer Society of India conferred an honorary fellowship on him. This was followed by Isro chairman K. Radhakrishnan naming the 50-year-old as “one of the leaders of tomorrow” for the current issue of a leading magazine.

Beginnings
Missiles like Agni, Prithvi, BrahMos, Dhanush, Prahar or fighter aircraft such as LCA, Jaguar, Sukhoi-30, Dr Reddy has worked on them all. He joined the organisation in 1986, when India was just starting her missile mission. He has been with the organisation since then and is currently the director of Research Centre Imarat (RCI). He says, “The enthusiasm of doing something for the first time was almost feverish — to see the first Prithvi missile go up at the launch pad in Sriharikota.”

And, then there were doldrums. He says, “The first Agni did not take off in two attempts. It was in 1989. Our three to four years of work depends on those two-three minutes at the launch pad. So it does hurt… we don’t talk, don’t look at each other. Our families are equally enthusiastic. If they don’t see the news on TV or we don’t take their calls, they understand the test failed.”

Family man   
After a week full of meetings and lectures, Dr Reddy likes to be left alone with wife Padma, and children Snigdha  and Anoosh. Friends are his next priority. “But these days I don’t get time. We officially have five workdays a week, but I often work on Sundays too... The textbook definition of a missile development is about 15 years, but DRDO has managed that in eight years. It requires sacrifice,” he says.

If he finds time in future, he would want to do social work in rural areas, because he hails from Mahimalore village in Nellore district. “There people know me as the one who fires rockets. They ask me all the time, ‘rocket kab chala rahe ho? (when are you firing the next?’ But I keep my explanations to “I make rockets to protect the country’.”