India’s first hot-air balloon flight celebrates 50 years on Children’s Day.
“I was called the Yuri Gagarin of India,” says Anil Kumar, recalling his experience of having travelled on India’s first hot-air balloon ride on 14 November 1963. The hydrogen gas balloon, launched by the then Karnataka chief minister S. Nijalingappa from the Race Course grounds in Bangalore, was part of Children’s Day celebration. The plan to build a Pestalozzi Children’s Village (based on the principles of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, a Swiss educational reformer) was also announced. “They wanted to have a grand event to make the announcement and so a hot-air balloon was brought in from Germany,” recalls Kumar, who was 14 years old at the time. The village was never built, but the memories of that balloon ride remain.
Two trained and licensed pilots from Germany, Hermann Johannes Scheer , the then director of Pestalozzi Kinderdorf, Germany, and Alfred Schulz were flown in for the event. Since the pilots were both German nationals, it was thought appropriate that at least one Indian should fly along with them to mark Children’s Day. “I was at the press conference two days before the event, along with my father who ran a magazine for the Karnataka Electricity Board. Since I was the only child they saw, they asked me if I would like to come along. Of course, I said yes,” says Anil Kumar.
The event made front page news in all the leading Indian newspapers. From a height of 18,000ft, Kumar recalls Bangalore as being green and gorgeous. “But the sight I can’t forget was the railway lines and the network,” he says.
“India Post brought out a First Day Cover with a photograph of Kumar and the two pilots in the balloon. “They handed us two mail bags containing the First Day Covers, to be carried as Balloon-Mail,” says Kumar, adding, the balloon landed about 20 miles (around 32km) away in a village called Cholanayakanahalli, on Magadi Road. Kumar was trained by the Bangalore city police to use a wireless communication handset and to keep them informed of the route they were taking. “The direction of a hot-air balloon is guided by the wind, so we couldn’t entirely determine where we would land,” says Kumar.
To celebrate 50 years since the country’s first hot-air balloon flight, Kumar, who runs a placement agency in Bangalore, will travel to Germany and launch another balloon flight in the presence of the Alfred Schulz, the only surviving pilot.
Anil Kumar also plans to start licensed balloon club in Bangalore this year.
source: http://www.livemint.com / Live Mint & The Wall Street Journal/ Home> Leisure / by Pavitra Jayaraman / Tuesday – July 05th, 2013