Whose Famous Week Would I Borrow?

If you could switch lives with a famous person for a week, who would it be and why?

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A reflection on fame, perspective, and the value of an ordinary life

Offered a famous person’s life for a week, most of us might reach for the spotlight: the stadium, the palace, the podium. I reached for a calendar instead.

No famous life is famous all week. Fame lives in a few public moments: the speech, the award, the winning goal. The rest is preparation, travel, tiredness, and waiting. Borrow a celebrity’s life for seven days, and you may discover that much of what you have borrowed is a timetable. So I asked a narrower question: whose famous week would I choose?

One answer kept returning. In April 1984, Indian Air Force pilot Rakesh Sharma spent seven days, twenty-one hours, and forty minutes aboard the Soviet space station Salyut 7. He became the first Indian citizen to travel into space. Those eight days became a defining part of his public story, and his is the week I would borrow. [1]

It would be no holiday. In weightlessness, the body has to adjust to a world without the familiar pull of gravity. Sharma and his fellow crew members carried out forty-three experimental sessions, including work involving yoga in weightlessness and the observation and photography of India from space. Up there, reputation counts for little. Competence, discipline, and teamwork matter. The station circled Earth roughly every ninety minutes, bringing about sixteen sunrises and sunsets each day. Yet a person occupied with demanding work might have little time to pause and admire them. [1]

Then came the moment many Indians remember. During a conversation with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, she asked Sharma how India looked from space. His reply, “Saare Jahan Se Achha”—the opening words of a much-loved patriotic poem—connected the extraordinary view from orbit with the familiar idea of home. The memorable answer was not a description of a distant planet. It was an expression of belonging. [2]

Writers had imagined such a view long before rockets carried people into space. In Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, a young Roman sees the Earth from above and is reminded how small it is—and how limited earthly fame can be. A Tamil poet of the Sangam age reached a related insight without leaving the ground. In Purananuru 189, a king who rules a great territory is compared with a hunter who keeps watch for game. Their circumstances differ, but both need food and clothing. The poem invites us to look beyond rank and power and recognise what human beings share. Seen from far enough away—or considered deeply enough—the great and the small may look less different than we imagine.

What came after Sharma’s spaceflight matters to me, too. He returned to his professional life as a test pilot. His achievement remains part of India’s history, but a remarkable week did not have to become the whole meaning of a life. That distinction is important: fame may preserve a moment in public memory, but it cannot tell us everything about the person who lived it.

Someone may fairly object that I have chosen a famous person whose story is not defined by a relentless pursuit of celebrity. And fame is not merely vanity. Sharma’s mission gave India a moment of pride and encouraged people to imagine possibilities beyond the familiar. Decades later, another Indian citizen travelled to space. Such achievements can inspire a generation to look up and ask what might be possible.

But I am not refusing the exchange. I would gladly experience the hardest, strangest week of Sharma’s life. I would want to see Earth from orbit and discover what that distance might teach me about our shared home. What I would refuse is the idea that one extraordinary week should own the rest of a life. The lesson I take from Sharma’s story is not that fame has no value, but that it need not become the measure of a person.

Then the spacecraft would bring me back, and I would return to my own ordinary life: the morning ride, the walk after lunch, and familiar voices around my table. At this stage of life, I value time differently. I would be grateful for gravity, for the scent of rain on warm earth, and for days that nobody else may remember. These moments may never make headlines, but they belong to the life I have actually lived. My life is not a rehearsal for somebody else’s.

And I would bring back a new way of looking at home. From orbit, Sharma was asked how India looked, and he answered with words that expressed affection for his country. I would like to look at my own small patch of ground with a similar sense of wonder—without needing to leave it. Perhaps the greatest gift of borrowing a famous week would be to return more attentive to the life that is already mine.

Notes for readers

[1] The Indian Human Space Flight Centre records that Rakesh Sharma spent 7 days, 21 hours, and 40 minutes aboard Salyut 7 and that the mission included forty-three experimental sessions. His work included biomedical studies and remote sensing.

[2] The phrase “Saare Jahan Se Achha” comes from a poem by Muhammad Iqbal, written in 1904 and widely known as a patriotic song.

The Dream of Scipio is the concluding section of Cicero’s On the Republic. Purananuru is an anthology of classical Tamil poems from the Sangam period; the poem discussed here is verse 189.

A Question for You

If you could borrow one famous week, whose would it be, and what would you bring back from it?

Thank you for being part of Rise&Inspire, where we strive to elevate in life by discovering meaning in our everyday experiences.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 20 October 2026: If you could switch lives with a famous person for a week, who would it be and why?

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