The year is 1961, when the US and the USSR are at the height of the Cold War, and all attention is focused on space. In October 1957, the Soviets had launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, into the earth’s orbit, thus gaining a distinct advantage in the ‘race for space’. The next year, to regain lost ground, president Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an order for the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). At NASA’s Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, there was a segregated west side whose existence not many NASA employees knew of. This was where the coloured women—or the ‘West Computers’—who did much of the space agency’s complex mathematical equations, sat.
Theodore Melfi’s biographical drama, Hidden Figures (2016)—about the lives of three path-breaking West Computers—begins after the Soviet Union’s Vostok 3KA-2 successfully orbits the earth in March 1961, carrying a mannequin and a dog. There is a note of desperation in the voice of Al Harrison, the head of NASA’s Space Task Group, as he demands a human computer who is good with analytical geometry to do the agency’s orbital calculations. A missive is sent to the west side, and Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson becomes the first West Computer to work with the Space Task Group. As she enters a room full of white men who pay her scant regard, a trash bin is thrust at her. “This wasn’t cleared yesterday,” says one of the men. “Oh no, I’m not here to…,” she tries explaining, but the man has already left.
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War Over Wounded Earth
For the BJP andthe Congress, the ravaged farmlands of Vidarbha represent a cxitieal battleground in their larger struggle to win Maharashtra
Say no to continual elections
Following the recommendations of a high-level committee led by former president Ram Nath Kovind to streamline the widely scattered schedule of national, state and local elections, the Union cabinet has reportedly approved two constitutional amendment bills for likely introduction in Parliament. Predictably, the return of the ‘one nation, one election’ issue to news has set off a flurry of objections by several opposition leaders.
Fabulously, fashionably funny
The third season of the Karan Johar-produced Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives dropped on Netflix, but articles criticising the show appear in some news site or the other almost daily. If it is so bad, why keep writing about it? And if it is so bad, why would the superpowers at Netflix, who are harder to meet than the prime minister, commission the show season after season?
All in the family
The Chitaras have been passing down the secret art of Mata Ni Pachedi through generations for more than 400 years now
Raise a toast to Vidya Balan
Vidya Balan is a New Year baby. At 45, she is aglow in the most beautiful way, having won the hearts and admiration of countless fans across the world, who watched the supremely talented actor take a public tumble on stage at a high-profile promotional event recently, sharing the platform with no less a dancer than the eternally graceful Madhuri Dixit.
Death no bar
Being alive is not a legal requirement to be elected president of the United States
The Lotus POTUS
You should visit us one of these days— there is so much excitement in our USA! No, I don’t mean the famous USA—the Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association of Mumbai.
RAY OF HOPE
Actor and cancer survivor Lisa Ray talks to oncologist Dr Jame Abraham about inner strength and her surrogacy journey
LEVERAGE AI TO ENHANCE WORK
AT THE WEEK Health Summit, Siddharth Bagga, head (retail, CPG and health care), Google Cloud, elaborated on the significant work that Google has been doing in health care through artificial intelligence (AI).
PRESSURE POINTS
Author and MP Shashi Tharoor and motivational speaker Gaur Gopal Das on how to find healing and meaning in today's world