Netflix India is coming up with a biopic on Flight Lieutenant Gunjan Saxena who was the first-ever woman IAF pilot in combat. The film features Jahnvi Kapoor in the leading role and Pankaj Tripathi plays her father. Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl will premiere on August 12, 2020.
But who is Gunjan Saxena? What makes her story inspiring enough to be made into a movie? What gives her the title of Kargil Girl?
First-ever woman IAF pilot
Gunjan Saxena is the first-ever woman IAF pilot. She was among the group of 25 women who joined the IAF in 1994. This was the first batch of women Air Force trainees for the IAF.
Later on in the service, Flight Lieutenants Gunjan Saxena and Srividya Rajan scripted history when they ventured into a war zone, becoming the first Indian women in combat.
Unfazed by gender bias
“Tomorrow when you go to the airport and fly on your own, that machine will not know whether a man is flying me or a woman is flying me, you know,” – Gunjan Saxena
Saxena’s first posting was in Udhampur, as part of the 132 Forward Area Control (FAC). She had to face many gender-based challenges like adapting to makeshift changing rooms until new ones were built for women. However, she mentions that the male pilots accepted the situation faster than she expected.
The first woman IAF Officer in Kargil War
Gunjan Saxena and Srividya Rajan were the only women to be part of the Kargil War, and also the first woman IAF officers to go to war. She was 25 years old when she flew the Cheetah helicopter during the Kargil War.
As part of Operation Vijay, apart from evacuating the wounded, she helped in transporting supplies to troops in the forward areas of Dras and Batalik. Saxena also was assigned surveillance roles such as mapping enemy positions. She had to fight through makeshift landing grounds, heights of 13,000 to 18,000 feet, and enemy fire.
Gunjan was one of the ten pilots and the only female pilot, based in Srinagar that flew hundreds of sorties during the war, evacuating over 900 injured casualties including those killed from Kargil.
And that’s why she is rightly referred to as the Kargil Girl.
First woman Shaurya Chakra awardee
Saxena is the First Woman Shaurya Chakra Awardee which she received for her service in the 1999 Kargil War.
Director’s note:
“She had a really innocent, child-like feeling when she spoke about her love for flying and that she wanted to fly and that really hit me on a personal level because as a kid when she was 10 and fell in love with flying, I was a ten-year-old kid who was obsessed with films. The same ‘Keeda’ romanticizing a childhood dream which I really took home personally with me,” says Sharan Sharma, Director of Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl explaining his urge to make the film.
What the real Gunjan Saxena feels about the film:
When asked how she feels about the biopic, Gunjan Saxena says, “I wasn’t really convinced, you know. Why somebody would like to make a movie about my life? Because you know when you have lived your life you don’t find it really exciting.”
Speaking further on the film’s narrative, she adds, “You didn’t say much but you said what I would have liked to express.”
Loved it? Don’t forget to watch the film on August 12 on Netflix.