The Carrier

Ravi Kumar was a brilliant student right from his school days. After doing his M. Sc. (Physics) from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangaluru, in the first class with distinction, he appeared and cleared the Joint Entrance Test (JET) for a Ph. D. Program and joined the Govt. Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad.

After one year of Course Work in the various branches of Physics, he opted for the Geo-Cosmo Division of the Laboratory for his Research Career. Very soon he became familiar with the operational tools in the Geo-Cosmo Division laboratory. He learnt the techniques of preparing rock and meteor samples from the pieces of rocks and meteors obtained by his Division from all over the world for studying them under a very sophisticated Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) the Division had. There were only three SEMs in the entire country at that time and all the three were shared by many of the research centres and universities in the country in time sharing mode.

A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is an electron microscope that produces images of a tiny specially prepared sample by scanning it with a focused beam of electrons. SEM can achieve resolution better than 1 nanometer with the magnification of the order of 500,000.  Apart from doing his own  research work Ravi was very helpful to the researchers coming from other institutes in the country.

Ravi Kumar started writing and publishing his research papers in reputed national and international journals jointly with his Research Guide. After a couple of years he started attending conferences and seminars at the prestigious institutes in India, and presented his papers there, at times, without his Guide by his side. His Guide who was busy with his other assignments and research activities usually chose to stay back in Ahmedabad. Ravi always traveled by train as he was not entitled to travel by air till then.

One morning his Guide called him to his room and asked him to attend a conference in Kolkata at a very short notice. The guide told Ravi Kumar that he was trying to get an approval for his air travel from the Senior Administrative Officer as a special case. Ravi Kumar, however, declined it politely and suggested that he would prefer to go by the direct train from Ahmedabd to Kolkata as that would give him time to make preparations for his presentation. His Guide obliged.

When Ravi repeatedly preferred to travel by train every time, his Guide squarely asked him what was his problem. Ravi Kumar hesitated for some time and then confessed that he had a phobia for air travel. His Guide was shocked.

"What nonsense! I am surprised that a grown up adult like you could be facing such a problem. Did you have any specific reason for this? Did you face any problem in your air trip before? Or your relative? Did you ever see a World war-II movie on a big screen when you were a child?"

"Not at all. I don't see war movies. But somehow I feel scared to travel by an aeroplane right from my childhood."

"But you must get over it. If you want to make a career as a scientist you will need to travel frequently. What if tomorrow you may have to go abroad. No trains. You will have to fly."

His Guide could anticipate the danger Ravi Kumar would face later in his life. He probed Ravi quite a lot. At the end of an hour's discussion he suggested that Ravi Kumar needed counselling to get rid of his phobia for air travel. He suggested him to meet Dr. Avasti, a personal friend of his Guide, who could be trusted. Ravi Kumar eventually agreed to meet Dr. Avasti.

Three sessions at a week's interval with Dr. Avasti could not remove Ravi's fear about an air travel. Dr. Avasti tried to convince him that risks in an air travel were not greater than in any other mode of transport in today's fast life. If one has to die, it could happen in a train accident or a during a bus travel or even in a car or on a two wheeler. If you could travel in a train that can collide with the other or get derailed can result in the same threat to life. Buses can catch fire. Cars can skid or collide with each other. Even as a pedestrian one can die in a terrorist attack in a crowded area. Dr. Avasti could not determine the cause of Ravi's phobia about air travel in spite of extensive question-answer sessions with him.

In utter exasperation he finally said, "Your phobia may be due to something that happened in your past birth. I don't see anything connected to it in this life of yours. May be you need a treatment from a PLR practitioner."

"What is PLR?" Ravi asked with some anxiety.

"PLR is past life regression. I don't know whether it is scientific. It is based on a belief that when a soul leaves a human body and enters a new one it could accidentally carry memories of the last few moments from the previous birth and creates fear and anxiety about a particular situation in the new life. Past life regression is a technique that uses hypnosis to recover memories of the past lives or incarnations. Past life regression is typically undertaken as a psycho therapeutic setting. The PLR practitioner instructs the patient in a hypnotic spell to remember the past life and tries to find out the cause of a fear. Once the cause is determined the broken memory links in the current birth are bridged and the earlier memories are wiped out.  As a result the patient gets rid of his phobia but forgets all the memories from his previous birth."

"Is it worth trying? Do you know anybody who could help me. My science career is at stake. I must get over this phobia."

"That's the only reason I think you may try it. I Know one Gayatri Devi who can help you. But remember the Q-A session during the hypnotic spell is never disclosed to the patient. You will never know about your past birth after the treatment. You will lead the normal life in the current birth, if the treatment was successful. And I must warn you that I myself have a lot many reservations about this technique."

"I am desperate Dr. Avasti. Why don't you put a word with this lady -Gayatri Devi- about me and get her appointment for me?"

Gayatri Devi in her late fifties was a very pleasant personality. The moment Ravi saw her he felt a great relief. She was carrying some aura around her he thought. Gayatri Devi looked like a spiritual person and was extremely sympathetic when Ravi narrated his story. She noted down a few details about Ravi and asked him to meet her on the following Wednesday evening.

Ravi reached her place in time. Gayatri Devi had a brief meditation before she started the session with Ravi. She asked Ravi to relax and look in to her eyes for a while. Ravi did not need much time to go in to the hypnotic state.

"Can you hear me Ravi? Try to remember your childhood days. Go back as much as possible. Can you? And tell me what you see."

"I am playing with my elder brother"

"Try to remember days before that...almost when you were an infant.."

"I remember my mother feeding me. It's an eternal bliss. Do not feel like stopping..."

"Go back further."

"Now I am in her womb. It's a most secured place in the world. She is protecting me from all the sides. In fact me and my mother are inseparable. She is talking to me. I don't know what she is talking but I feel like hearing it all the time."

"Go back Ravi. You have to reach a point in time when you had not entered her womb. What do you see?"

"A fireball. I am in a fire ball. Everything around me is melting."

"What caused the fire? Where were you when the fire started?"

"I don't know. I am up there. Returning home from somewhere. I am eager to return."

"Are you in a aeroplane?"

"I can't say. I was there for a week."

"Do you see other passengers? How many? Do you see any flight attendants giving you instructions?"

"We are waiting for a safe landing. We are five of us sitting in our chairs with seat belts secured. No, we are seven. Two are in cockpit."

"Five passengers. A week long flight. Strange. Try to remember what was that. Just concentrate."

"Liberty. I remember now. The Space Shuttle Liberty. We were about to land on the Edwards Air Force Base, California. We had a week long flight. We had successfully conducted many scientific experiments. All of us very happy."

"Then what happened?"

"The Space Shuttle was entering the thick atmosphere and we knew there was to be no radio contact with the Ground Control for some time as the shuttle underside was brushing with the atmosphere and was passing through charged particles caused by the friction between the shuttle and the atmospheric gases. This was shielding any radio waves reaching the shuttle"

"Then?"

"Then it happened. Everything around us started melting. Unbearable heat. All of us were in a shocked state. This was never expected. A big fireball. And then nothing for some time. The time stopped ticking, don't know how long. And then I was in my mother's womb frantically trying to come out."

"Good. Now relax Ravi. You were a scientist-astronaut on the Space Shuttle Liberty that disintegrated in space just a few moments before the landing killing all the seven crew members. It was a great loss to NASA and the entire mankind in the world. NASA suspended further shuttle flights for many years later. This accident was the cause of your phobia for air travel. No need to investigate further. Relax for a while. When you come out from the hypnotic spell you will not remember any of this and hope you will lead a normal life after this."

Ravi woke up after some time. He was feeling completely relaxed. For some time he did not know where he was. But slowly he came to senses. He saw Gayatri Devi sitting by his side with her right hand massaging his forehead lightly.

"Feeling better?"

"Yes madam. Could you get something?"

"Don't worry. Everything is over. It was a bad dream. You are perfectly OK."

"What did I say when I was sleeping?"

"You will never know that and it's not necessary also. Good luck. I will bring some coffee. We both need it."

In a few days time Ravi could fly to Delhi for a conference. And to many conferences later held at different cities in the world. He could finish his research and submitted his Ph. D thesis in five years a rare thing to have happened. He was offered a post of a Visiting Scientist and was expected to search a permanent position elsewhere. By this time he had developed many contacts with the stalwarts in his field of research the world over and he had no difficulty in getting a job at a place of his choice. He had decided to do specialisation in the filed of Astrobiology an upcoming branch in Physics.

At the end of his search for a position he joined the University Of Nottingham, UK, that was collaborating with NASA and conducting experiments on microscopic worms C. elegans for sending them on a possible space flight to Mars.

According to scientists at the University of Nottingham, Microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans or C. elegans for short are believed to hold clues to the human colonisation of space.  Long-term manned space flight presents many challenges to the human body, such as radiation exposure and muscle deterioration due to decreased gravity. Many of the biological changes that happen during a space flight affect astronauts and these worms in the same way. Both have fully developed neuro-muscular systems. Both share genes from a common ancestor. For example, many genes which when mutated give diseases in humans also do so in worms. With respect to space flight, both show same changes in metabolism. Hence the worm is a prime candidate to form an advance party to Mars in order to examine the effects of long-distance space travel on earthly organisms.

Ironically when Ravi Kumar joined the University of Nottingham, he was completely ignorant about the fact that he was associated with these worms during his previous birth also. He was a part of the team that wanted to study the effects of space travel on these worms. The Space Shuttle Liberty's week-long flight in space in 1985 was devoted almost exclusively to science and research. It carried dozens of experiments, including one that investigated the growth and reproductive behaviour of the nematode worm C. elegans in microgravity.

Tragically, Liberty and its seven-astronaut crew were lost when the orbiter disintegrated upon re-entry to Earth's atmosphere due to heat shield damage. The nematodes, C. elegans, housed in specially designed canisters, however, survived the tragedy and were recovered alive later.

This taught the scientists some lessons about the tenacity of life, and how it might spread from planet to planet. It was the first demonstration that animals can survive a re-entry event similar to what would be experienced inside a meteorite. It showed directly that even complex small creatures originating on one planet could survive landing on another without the protection of a spacecraft. Ravi Kumar in his previous birth never knew that the worms he had carried on board the space shuttle Liberty had survived the Space Shuttle disaster.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), the American spacecraft was launched by NASA from  Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on 18th November 2013. It entered the Mars orbit on 21st September 2014. The spacecraft has started providing information about the Red Planet's atmosphere, climate history and potential habitability in greater detail than ever before.

Along with the many science payloads it carries, it also has a Remote Monitoring System developed by a University of Nottingham scientist of Indian origin Dr. Ravi Kumar for monitoring from earth the C. elegans worms kept in three canisters.

It is difficult to say whether Ravi Kumar enabled the worms to go on a space flight to Mars or the Mother Nature made him take a rebirth to complete her task of spreading life from one planet to another in our solar system! Mother Nature always has her own designs which we will hardly understand.

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A few facts about NASA's Space Shuttle Program:

NASA developed Space Shuttle, a reusable spacecraft, as a space transportation system. From April 1981 to July 2011 the five orbiters — Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour — had flown more than 135 times, carrying over 350 people into space and travelling more than half a billion miles.  It was typically designed to be launched like a rocket, orbit the earth like a spacecraft and land like an aeroplane. It enabled the scientists to conduct many experiments in zero gravity or microgravity that was impossible to create on earth. While in orbit space shuttle astronauts launched a few satellites, repaired a few, including Hubble Space Telescope and carried men and material to the International Space Station (ISS), the orbiting manned observatory above earth since 1998.

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members, which included five NASA astronauts and two payload specialists. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida.    

The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana as it reentered Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members (including Ms. Kalpana Chawla).The nematodes, C. elegans, housed in specially designed canisters on board Columbia, however, survived the tragedy and were recovered alive later.