Dundigal dazzle: Dreams take flight for women

HYDERABAD: Of the 40 cadets who got wings and joined the ranks of the Indian Air Force’s fighter team on Saturday, Priya Sharma of Rajasthan was the lone woman. Incidentally, she is the third woman from Jhunjhunu to join the IAF’s elite fighter brigade.
Though initially nervous of flying an aircraft, a super excited Priya told STOI: “I’m now comfortable in the cockpit, it is like my second home.”
An alumna of IIIT-Kota, Priya always dreamt of flying a plane since her childhood.“As my father is an air traffic control (ATC) officer with IAF, I got introduced to fighter planes and flying officers early in life. This inspired me to become an IAF fighter pilot,’’ Priya said, after the Combined Graduation Parade in which 139 flying cadets got ‘stripes’ (IAF rank) at Air Force Academy, Dundigal. Of the 139 flying officers, 24 were women.
She is the seventh fighter pilot in the IAF history and third from Jhunjhunu of Rajasthan, which also produced Mohana Singh and Prathiba.
Several girls took it as a challenge to continue their father’s legacy of being in the defence forces. They had to fight all odds, including personal tragedy, to achieve their dream. For 24-year-old Aishwarya Girish Awasthi, who is now a flying officer in logistics branch, it was a double whammy, she lost her father and brother in a span of 20 months.
“I wanted to join the defence forces. When my father, an IAF group captain, died in May 2017 due to ill health, my resolve to join IAF became stronger. It became a mission, both for me and my mother. I discontinued MBA and joined Air Force Academy in December 2017,” Awasthi, who is engineering graduate, added.