How India got a seat at the Antarctic table

By Santosh Saligram

One morning in April, I was in my study polishing a script when my wife, Sourabha, walked in with some exciting news. We had only last year launched a storytelling company dedicated to making documentaries on wildlife. Now it seemed that our friend and collaborator, Prakash Matada, an award-winning wildlife cinematographer and filmmaker, wanted us to meet someone for a project on Antarctica. This left me stunned for several reasons.

For one, Antarctica, although no longer the unchartered bastion of daredevil explorers that it once was, remains a far more remote realm than its northern counterpart, the Arctic, so the mention of a film project there surprised me. Anyhow, what could qualify us to do it, considering we had never been there? And who would fund it? 

These questions lingered in our minds until Matada sent us the link to a video to prepare for the meeting. It featured the seismologist Dr Harsh Kumar Gupta. And within minutes of watching it, the mystery lifted: the story wasn’t about wildlife at all, but an epochal event in world history that had remained hidden under layers of ice for over 40 years. 

The Mi-8 helicopter with the underslung load, moments before crashing

Forbidding challenge

From 1981 to 1982, India had sent expeditions to the frozen continent, keen to have a seat at the Antarctic table. But to prove our mettle, it was first necessary to have a research base station there. They called it Dakshin Gangotri (literally ‘Southern Gangotri’), after the glacier in Antarctica, itself named after the Gangotri Glacier of the Himalaya. The challenge? A team from India would have to build it in just one Antarctic summer — about 60 days — a feat that had never been achieved before by any country. A tall order.

But Dakshin Gangotri was only one of the feathers in Dr Gupta’s hat. He was also the brain behind the development of the Indian Early Tsunami Warning System in response to the 2004 disaster, and had held numerous important positions — member of the National Disaster Management Authority of India, secretary of the Department of Ocean Development, director of the National Geophysical Research Institute, vice-chancellor of the Cochin University of Science and Technology, director of the Centre for Earth Sciences in Thiruvananthapuram, and professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, USA. We also discovered to our continued astonishment that he had authored five books published by Elsevier and Springer, and conceived and edited an entire Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics running into some 1,500 pages. He was honoured with the Padma Shri in 2006.

The film crew with Dr Gupta and his wife Manju.

First meeting

We appeared for our introductory meeting with him intimidated by his stature. But the minute we walked in, we relaxed, as it became evident that he was a man of supreme gentleness, genuine modesty and a profound love for his work. He displayed none of the severity that is the hallmark of some scientists and scholars. He revealed that a big mainstream-film production house had approached him with a biopic proposal, but he had declined because they wanted to take full control of the story, and he was against sensationalism or fictionalisation of events. Reassured by his noble position, we discussed some possible approaches to the documentary.

The crew entertained themselves on board by playing games and pranking each other.

Matada had meanwhile handed us a copy of Dr Gupta’s book, ‘Building Dakshin Gangotri at Antarctica: A Miracle’, which was to serve as the primary reference to plan the film’s narrative, and I fell into reading it soon enough. It gave me deep insight into the sheer magnitude of the challenge Dr Gupta had taken up, the onerousness of the risks it entailed, and the exceptional leadership he displayed.  

Into the unknown

In 1983, Dr Gupta, then 40, was among the several scientists who had pitched research projects in anticipation of the station’s successful setup. The assessing panel rejected his proposal, citing limited manpower, but impressed by the blend of his youth and experience, counter proposed that he lead the expedition.

Never one to shy away from a gauntlet, Dr Gupta promptly called his wife Manju, living then in Thiruvananthapuram with their two children, Nidhi (12) and Benu (9). Manju readily consented to his plunge into the unknown.

This was remarkable, because the Antarctica of the ’80s was a wild and terminal frontier. The only way to reach it was by a sea voyage lasting several weeks. Communication was limited to the occasional monosyllabic exchanges over a satellite phone.

But it wasn’t only his family Dr Gupta would have to worry about. In his hands would be the lives of 81 crew members, 16 of whom were scientists, and the rest, engineers and pilots from the armed forces. Many of them had never seen snow and ice, and so they were taken to Ladakh’s Machoi Glacier, where at about 15,750 feet, they rehearsed everything from walking to resisting the cold, and finding crevices to pitching tents. 

Departure from Goa

After several meetings with then-prime minister Indira Gandhi, who was personally monitoring the project, the team set sail from Goa on December 3, 1983, on Finnpolaris, a chartered Finnish ice-class ship, capable of cutting through 70 cm thick fast ice and cruising at up to 16 knots per hour. The nearly 160m-long, 22m-wide vessel with an 80-foot hold, was customised for the expedition to carry the 81 team members and their food, two Mi-8 helicopters and two Chetak helicopters, some 900 tonnes of building material, and 1,000 barrels of oil for running the generators of the station to be constructed. Out in the open ocean, they had enough time to contemplate the enormity of the task they had just signed up for: dig up an area of 620 square metres, erect two double-storey buildings with heating to house 12 scientists — all in less than 60 days. A few days were bound to be lost to blizzards and whiteouts. So hopeless seemed the goal that they were given a mere 15% chance of success. 

After spotting their first iceberg on December 23, the crew reached the northern shore of the Antarctic landmass on December 26 and anchored the ship. Exploring the land in a PistenBully (a specialised snow groomer used primarily in snowy environments to prepare trails) the site for the construction was identified. But barely had the work begun when disaster struck.

Narrow escape

While lifting a load, one of the Mi-8 helicopters flew off the ship without gaining adequate height, so that the underslung cargo became entangled with the ship’s railing, dragging the copter down. In no time, its rotors hit the ship’s crane, causing it to crash  into the water, where it turned turtle. Fortunately, a Plexiglas window, which the team had carved out at the bottom of the copter to allow the pilot to view the slung load, allowed the occupants trapped inside to escape. 

This immediately prompted a call from Indira Gandhi, who, after enquiring about the wellbeing of the men involved in the accident, posed a point-black question to Dr Gupta. “Can you still do it?” He replied, “If I don’t do it, I don’t come back.” The captain took Dr Gupta aside and asked, “When do we leave?” He replied, “This is the last time you’re asking this question. We will leave only after we complete the station.” And there was a war-cry en-masse: “We shall do it!” 

By the time I had finished reading the book, these words echoed in my room. I was raring to go. In May, together with two cinematographers, Rakesh Kote and Suveen Poojary, Sourabha and I travelled to Hyderabad, where Dr Gupta lives, to commence principal photography. 

As the interviews unravelled, Dr Gupta told us the story in vivid detail — how the crew played pranks and games to pass the long hours to get to know one another better. There were good recreational facilities on board, including a table tennis table, and a tournament was held in which everyone participated. Many of the members fell badly seasick as the journey moved deeper south.

After the team landed on Antarctica and the site was identified, construction was no easy task. The helicopter crash meant that Dr Gupta did not want to risk any more underslung loads, so everything had to be disassembled and transported. The building was constructed using prefabricated timber elements. One block housed workshops and provided storage space, while the other had laboratories, a kitchen, a lounge and a living room, apart from two-people bunk rooms, a radio room and toilets for the 12 team members who would be wintering at the station. The team laboured away almost round the clock, through icicled beards and babies born back home. 

The base station had become functional by February 24, 1984. Only one question remained: would it survive the harsh winter of Antarctica? Dr Gupta was assailed by doubts about whether it was safe to leave the wintering team behind. It was a tough decision to make. But something happened that may have seemed like a setback, but was a blessing in disguise. A big blizzard hit them from February 25 to 28, with the wind speeds breaking all previous records for this part of the continent. The team had to depart on March 1, failing which there was a real danger of the ship being ice-locked and the entire team getting stranded for a year. For four full days they were absolutely battered, and confined indoors. But that being a leap year, there was a 29th day in February! And when the blizzard subsided, something amazing happened: it occurred to the team that the station had withstood the test of the heaviest weather this part of Antarctica had seen in recorded history! Dr Gupta’s decision was finally made. 

The team departed from Antarctica on March 1 as scheduled by the captain of Finnpolaris, leaving the brave wintering team of 12 scientists to fend for themselves until the next year’s expedition. The five men injured in the helicopter crash were recovering and out of danger. During the return passage via Mauritius, Dr Gupta discovered that several members of his team had lost their toes to frostbite. When asked why they hadn’t told him, so that he could have sent them back to the ship to rest, they said, “That’s exactly why we didn’t.” Such was their commitment that they didn’t want to be laid off despite their injuries.

On March 29, 1984, the Finnpolaris finally arrived in Goa, to fanfare by the naval band. Dr Gupta having located his wife and kids waved at them, but they took no notice, as they didn’t recognise him with his beard! 

Funding worries

Amid all the cheer and camaraderie during our shoot, one worry was gnawing away: funding. Our vision was to make the film as evocative and immersive as possible. We had early on decided that recreating scenes using actors and sets was not the way to go, as it would lack some degree of authenticity, and the production design to keep the visuals authentic would make the project unviable. In the absence of enacted scenes, it would be necessary to use graphics to depict them. 

We had also planned trips to Kochi and Delhi to interview expedition members, Dr K J Mathew and Dr Ashok Hanjura. This, along with other post-production essentials, would escalate the cost very quickly. Dr Gupta had very kindly offered to partly fund the project, but we still had to raise enough to tell this story in a way that did it justice. That is when our good friend, Shripathy Hadigal, connected us to Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies,
who took immediate interest in the project. The Samagata Foundation also stepped in.

The film, which will be out in mid-2026, was shot mostly in Hyderabad. It will feature a mix of archival footage from a crew member, personal photographs of the crew, licensed landscape footage and interviews.

This was possible because of the gravity of the material, and the ingenuity, labour and perseverance of the Dakshin Gangotri team. 

And that is why, sitting on the bank of Hyderabad’s Hussain Sagar Lake on a subsequent visit, I found the true meaning of the title Dr Gupta had given his book. Dakshin Gangotri was a miracle composed of a series of miracles. But the biggest was this: with his leadership, he had been able to spark an entire team to cast themselves aside in the quest for something larger, something that would endure the frigid, snowy winds of time.