The Man with Big Ears, and Big Dreams that Took India to the Moon

On 12 August 1919, a baby boy was born in the home of Ahmedabad’s leading textile mill-owner; his siblings looked at him and declared he had big ears, ‘just like Gandhiji’, which they wanted to fold like betel leaves. The baby was Vikram Sarabhai. Monday marks the birth centenary of this remarkable figure, even as Chandrayaan-2, steadily surging towards the moon shines a light on the Indian space programme which he founded.