Reaching for the Skies

Published by RahRahiRasta on August 15, 2020August 15, 2020

Training stage picture (from left to right): Srividhya Rajan, Namrita Chandi, Anuradha Nair, Gunjan Saxena, Supreet Chandi, Savita Sirohi

As India celebrates its 74^th Independence day and in the week the film “The Kargil Girl” was released, Aradhana Sharma has a conversation with another Indian Air Force trailblazer whose dream of donning the uniform came true the same year as Gunjan Saxena.

The weather was bad and it was getting dark. The challenge for  Squadron Leader Supreet Chandi and her co-pilot was to reduce the flying time of each sortie. After all it was a matter of life and death. Each additional trip meant more lives saved.

Sq. Ldr. Supreet had been summoned late afternoon by her Commanding Office at their base in Tezpur (Assam, North-Eastern India) and asked to “get dressed and get airborne”. Within minutes, leaving her year-and-a half old child at home, Supreet was in her Chetak (helicopter) with a location map in hand and her co-pilot by her side. It was an evacuation mission. A group of Indian Paramilitary troops had been ambushed by terrorists close to the eastern border and many were injured. Supreet’s orders were to get to the site at the earliest and airlift as many of the soldiers as possible to the nearest medical facility.

“Soon after we flew the weather became bad and we were faced with a layer of thick clouds. We reorganized our path and landed at the destination not knowing if the ambush was still alive”, recalls Supreet.

Time was of the essence. Many soldiers had been injured. “Our chopper could only take a few. So we did multiple sorties in the shortest time possible,” she adds with a feeling of joy and relief even after so many years at the fact that her efforts meant lives had been saved.

This was 2004.  Supreet’s journey to the Indian Air Force began in 1994. This was just a few years after women were inducted into the forces even fewer since they were inducted into flying operations.

“Uniform always attracted me”, says Supreet, daughter of a farmer in Uttarakhand. Joining the police seemed the only possible option, till the day she suddenly spotted an advertisement in the local Employment News. “It was SSB (Service Selection Board) inviting female applicants for the flying branch of the Indian Air Force. Her heart skipped a beat. She applied. A cousin in the Air Force, a fighter pilot had always been a hero and inspiration but there was little else she knew about the process or the demands.

“Those were pre internet days, no googling for instant information, it was not easy to get information” she remembers, “I spoke to a friend’s boy-friend who had cleared the SSB to ask him what I would be in for, if called for the selection process.”

Supreet was pursuing an undergraduate degree at Pantnagar University and lived in the hostel. An ignored post by her mother, at home, meant that by the time she found out that she had been called for the selection tests she had just two days to prepare. “On Friday when I called my mother she said there is a letter for me. I asked her to open and read it immediately. It said that I was to be in Dehradun for the selection process on Monday!”

Monday at the SSB Centre started with the filling of forms and was followed by several tests both physical and mental including the Pilots Aptitude Battery Test. This first entry barrier is where most rejections were known to happen. As the 120 girls who came for the tests lined up at the end of the day, officers gave them a pep talk saying it was not the end of the day. But just as the dejected candidates were about to move out Chest number 23 was called out and asked to wait. Chest no. 23 was Supreet Chandi.

Many more days were spent planning and training, before she joined five others as the IAFs second batch of helicopter pilots including Gunjan Saxena. Supreet was an inspiration for her elder sister Namrita too, who decided to quit her post-graduation and try for this position later the same year. She too succeeded and they were commissioned in 1996. They came to be known as the “Chandi sisters”.

They came to be known as the “Chandi sisters”.

Supreet with her sister Namrita

Was it hard adjusting in the male dominated world of the forces? Of course, she says. “It was new and different for both sides. We were going in by choice but there were many who did not welcome us by choice, we were just put there next to them”. But IAF as an organization, she says, always kept an eye out. “They were always mindful of where the women were being sent. They made sure that there was never a sole woman at any base”, she points out telling me that she and one of her batchmates were sent together to Bhuj on their first posting.

Of course they were always under the lens. Anything they did or did not do was noticed as they stood out. There was also some resentment in the peers as they felt they could not carry on as usual with the “crew room talk” and had to soften their language. “It was a process of adjustment on both sides. It was easier for an individual to find ways to adjust than always expecting years of institutional culture to change” pointed out Supreet, adding that more women donning the uniform over the years has led to the dilution of the masculine culture.

Personally her toughest moment in the male bastion was when a bunch of juniors refused to  acknowledge and work under her smoothly. She lined them up and let them have it in “some good flowery language” that “she meant business”.  “From that moment on, I got no trouble” laughs Supreet. “So you not only had to prove yourselves to the seniors but also to the juniors!”

In the Air Force, like many other of her colleagues, Supreet found love and life. After 10 years of service, Supreet hung up her boots not out of choice, but due to medical reasons in the family. “When I started I never thought I would leave. To me the uniform meant a lot”. But the medical emergency meant she had to prioritize.

“Once I take a decision I never look back. I cherish those days but I am happy that with my husband being in the Air Force I do not miss that life,” says Supreet. Even today seeing women pilots and officers makes her feel “wow!”. Maybe subconsciously I know that I would feel bad so I decided consciously never to look back”. There is nothing displayed in Supreet’s house that would let on that she once donned a pilots’ uniform. This conversation with me, she says has brought back many old memories that she usually keeps tucked away.

(Three of Supreet’s female course-mates, including Gunjan Saxena, voluntarily retired between 2003-2005 when the government announced an open door policy for IAF. The other three completed their 10 years and Supreet’s sister Namrita was the only one to serve for 15 years.  Namrita Chandi was among those who went to court asking the IAF and the Indian government to allow Permanent Commission for women. The verdict has come in their favour.)

This article was written by the author without watching The Kargil Girl, so as not to colour the narrative.