ON THE WINGS OF DREAMS

An Indian boy dreamt about making airplanes. Fifty years later, he is fulfilling it in the US 

- MAIJO ABRAHAM

All that little Augustine dreamt of were airplanes—flying them high in the sky, soaring over the clouds. He lived near an airport, and he knew a way to get past its fence and the security guards. Often, he would wait until it was dark, and hide near the runway. He felt a thrill every time he saw a plane approach, its lights shining brightly and its engine roaring, and his body would shake with the loud noise and the rumbling. He would imagine himself in the cockpit, steering the bird to its destination.

The more he watched them, the more he wanted to fly them. In fact, he wanted to make them. The small-town boy did not know how he was going to. But he never stopped dreaming.

And then a door opened. “I had the opportunity to join the National Cadet Corps,” says Captain Augustine Joseph on a video call from California. The little boy from Thiruvananthapuram is now the proud owner of the American high-performance aircraft manufacturer Lancair Aerospace International. It sells in 34 countries and has manufactured some 2,400 airplanes.

“You get one or two flights in the NCC, and the interest kept growing,” says Joseph, 56. He could have joined the flying club in Thiruvananthapuram, but he was not keen on flying the low-performance planes they had. “My interest was to fly those powerful jets,” he says. “And I found out that if I joined the Air Force, I could fly big jets and fighter jets.”