I’ve always had a thing for flight.
It started in high school, with the unmistakable smell of balsa wood glue and nitro fuel. My weekends were spent building model airplanes under the quiet but watchful eye of Captain Bhole, the stern yet patient head of the NCC Air Wing in Pune. He ran a tight squad, but had a soft spot for kids like me—wide-eyed, overconfident, and always asking if we could add “just one more motor” to a model that clearly wasn’t meant for it.
Those early days taught me the basics of aerodynamics, patience (which I ignored), and the joy of watching something you built with your own hands take to the sky.
Fast forward a few years. College was done. Real life loomed. But I couldn’t shake the itch to build something that flew—not just a model this time, but something real. Something that could carry me.
Enter Colonel Vivek Mundkur.
Captain Bhole introduced us, saying, “You two should talk.” Turns out, Colonel Mundkur wasn’t just anyone—he was India’s first hang-glider pilot. Back in 1972, when no one in India even knew what hang gliding was, he had built his own glider from scratch and jumped off a cliff with it. That’s the kind of résumé that makes you sit up straight.
He still had that glider stashed away, tucked in a dusty corner of his home, like a relic of a daredevil past. Over chai and stories, he spoke about air currents, lift ratios, and the physics of not dying. I was hooked.
We decided to build one together. This was in 1995-96.
Let’s be clear: we had no money. Just a shared love for flight, a few back-of-the-napkin sketches, and a talent for talking people into odd favors. We scrounged for aluminum tubing in local scrap yards around Pune, often explaining to bemused shopkeepers why we needed it “not too bent.” For the wing, we settled on HDPE woven plastic—the kind used to make sacks for wheat and grain.
Now came the real wildcard: stitching those plastic sheets into a glider wing.
Colonel Mundkur had a contact in Mumbai who “might know a guy.” So off we went—two dreamers on a crowded Deccan Queen train to Mumbai, a rolled-up plastic bundle in tow. In the shadowy bylanes near Masjid Bunder station, we found him: an industrial tailor working on the second floor of a warehouse that smelled like oil, rust, and ancient ambition.
We showed him our sketches. He didn’t flinch. Just nodded and said, “Give me two weeks.”
True to his word, two weeks later we were back, collecting what looked like a giant plastic bat wing.
Assembly was part engineering, part chaos. We bolted aluminum pipes together, tied ropes where bolts wouldn’t reach, and balanced everything with a mix of optimism and physics.
The result was… magnificent. At least to us.
Our test site was a sloping hill near Khadakvasla Lake, outside the village of Kudje. It wasn’t very high, but it had enough slope to build speed and maybe—maybe—generate lift.
We flew the glider for a couple of glorious trial runs. Vivek went first—calm, confident, textbook takeoff. Then it was my turn. Helmet on, nerves buzzing, I sprinted downhill, legs churning, eyes squinting into the sun. And then—just for a second—the ground fell away.
I was flying.
Okay, gliding. Briefly. But it counts.
My younger brother Vikram was there too, along with a few of my college mates. Vikram, not one to be left out of an adventure, insisted on trying it himself. We strapped him in, gave him the usual crash course (no pun intended), and off he went running. Except—on his third step—his foot caught on a rock. He tumbled hard and stayed down.
The pain was instant and intense. He couldn’t even stand on that leg. Our flying day abruptly turned into a first-aid mission. We bundled him into the car and drove straight to the emergency room. Turned out he’d snapped a tendon and eventually needed knee surgery to extract the broken bits. Thankfully it did not have any long term effects on his mobility. And did not scare him from flying.. whew..
That grounded us for a while.
It was absurd. It was risky.
And I learned many lessons along the way that helped me shape my future life.
Gautam Godse 