Captain Nivedita Bhasin, the youngest woman pilot in the world civil aviation history, commanded a Boeing 787 and a commercial jet aircraft talks about the profession, her hobbies and the bigger cause .In conversation with Ronisha Bhattacharyya, Reporter , Jagran Josh.
Considering all the accolades that she has got so far, the first question was to know how did it feel to be the youngest woman to achieve so much, to which Captain Nivedita Bhasin answered.
“ In the beginning, I didn’t really know whether if I was the youngest one, and yes that flight was very special for me. The reason being, I was with a boy on the flight and we kept getting new messages congratulating us on your flight and with every message, the thank you would be given by the boy, so I asked him as to why would he keep replying and why couldn’t she do it as well, to which she realized , that for the other boy, that flight was his first as well. It was all very thrilling, because, when I joined Indian Airlines, I has just turned twenty one , back in 84 I was the third woman to join the Indian airlines”.
Well not very often does one get an opportunity to interview someone who has seen things from the very start. So the most obvious question that rolled down next was that how did she manage to rough it out, when a lot of her kinds were still choosing soft options as their profession.
To which she answered that she never had to convince anyone about her decision, and believed that if she has taken the decision, it didn’t really matter to me if someone was convinced or not.
“My family, parents all of them wanted me to do well, and there is any ways a thing that whatever you start, you must finish it well. So it was when I was 15 when I went forth to the gliding club, and I was asked to come back home because I was too young back then, but then I started of with something else which was the Aero boarding and soon I started liking it . Because flying has always been very expensive, my mother filled up a scholarship form for me , which I cleared. This kind of set a tone for me for times ahead.”.
When asked about how she felt when she got her license at the age of 18,she came clear that, initially she never wanted to do the regular studying and wanted to carve a niche for herself. What exited her was the fact that not many women were flying planes and that really excited her and helped her pursue her career ahead. She added “Though I missed having lived my college life, flying kind of compensated that feeling of void”.
The next question that was asked was, how important did she think was having a life partner who would belong to the same profession, to which she replied.
“In terms of flying, it is very important to have a partner who is a pilot himself/herself. Because it gets very difficult to explain it to your partner the kind of stress you go though. It can tend to have long hours etc that can be tough for a partner not from the same line to understand”.
When asked about how she took up this profession and handled her family and work, she admitted that the road has been very difficult , “back when my children were growing up, I had to handle work and them . Though my parents and in-laws helped great deal, it has been a very rocky journey to success . The good thing is, I never gave up, now my children have grown up and I have some time on my hand, and hence I wish to give time to all those children who wish to pursue this line”.
Though this line has been dominated by men , and there no doubts about the same, Captain Bhasin has successfully kept herself from falling into that mind set and now she keeps herself busy with photography etc .
At times, student do wish to take up aviation as their profession, but don’t know how to go about it, so what is the kind of colleges or institutes students should be looking at was the best question, to which she answered.
“ Students need to have science in classes 11 and 12 , there after one can start flying, but one needs to be with a flying school. The two good flying schools are The Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Udaan Academy and the National Flying Premier Institute”.
Finally the interview finished on a nice note, where the ‘Alpha Women’ wished her best regards to all those students who wish to open their wings soon to this beautiful profession
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