The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : ‘Charity must begin at home’

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Thursday, Mar 13, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

‘Charity must begin at home’

A.D. Rangarajan

At a time when girls of her age were still in school, Usha Sundaram became the first woman pilot

Usha Sundaram

TIRUPATI: As all talk of women’s emancipation after the International Women’s Day celebrations has started subsiding, here is a story of a “high-flying” woman.

Usha Sundaram (84), who is well known in aviation circles as the first woman pilot in India, asserts “Empowerment, liberation or emancipation, call it by whatever name, starts with encouragement at home.”

At a time when girls of her age hardly got their basic educational aspirations realised, Ms Sundaram became the first graduate of the Government Flying Training School, Jakkur (Bangalore). After taking her flying licence in 1949, there was no looking back for the girl whose dream was to conquer the sky.

World record

She joined her husband, Captain V.Sundaram, as a co-pilot in steering the VTAXX, the personal aircraft of none other than the Maharaja of Mysore. In fact, Captain Sundaram was near synonymous to flying in those days due to his association with the Tata Airways.

The couple holds the world record for the fastest flying time (27 hours) between London and Madras in a piston engine aircraft. With sheer willpower, she could overcome the scores of nightmarish experiences on board, that too in the absence of sophisticated radio aids those days.

“Once we took off at Bhubaneswar in the midst of a cyclonic storm and zoomed ahead blindly for three hours. We were startled to find the aircraft hovering above Nagpur when we broke the clouds,” Ms.Usha recalls.

Achievements

When an ailing Sardar Patel was flown from Nagpur to Delhi in a Dakota DC3 -- a non-pressurised aircraft -- she had the guts to take a calculated risk by flying at a mere 3,000 feet as the Sardar had a heart problem.

She had to maintain a low altitude again while moving the legendary Shyama Prasad Mookherji’s daughter from Kolkata to Delhi. The list of political stalwarts flown by her goes on.

The couple derived pleasure in flying their private aircraft even up to 1996, till before Captain Sundaram’s demise.

Though her children did not evince interest in flying, her grandson has decided to continue the legacy by taking a commercial flying licence. “He is now with a noted private airliner at Bangalore,” says the brimming Usha, who was the first woman to conquer aerospace. No wonder then that she was felicitated and conferred the award ‘First woman in aerospace’ at a convention organised in National Aeronautics Laboratory, Bangalore, in 2001.

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