Rajani Pandit

#9/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Rajani Pandit is an Indian private investigator who is regarded as the first woman private investigator in the state of Maharashtra, and sometimes even the first in India. She has been the subject of a documentary, written two books, received numerous awards, and is considered one of the most famous detectives in India.

Rajani Pandit was born in Palghar, in the Thane district of Maharashtra. Her father, Shantaram Pandit, was a criminal investigator with the Mumbai Police. She studied Marathi literature at Ruparel College in Mumbai where she first became interested in detective work when, in 1983, she investigated a classmate who was trapped in the business of prostitution. She informed her parents, who initially did not accept it, but later thanked her for informing them. Rajani says that it was the grateful family of the girl that she investigated who encouraged her to go into detective work as a profession. She found that "No qualification is required to be a detective. It requires concentration, hard work, struggle, in-depth knowledge and dedication towards the profession." As a result, she started her agency, Rajani Pandit Detective Services, also known as Rajani Investigation Bureau, in 1991. She set up an office in Mahim, Mumbai and, by 2010, employed a staff of 30 detectives and was handling about 20 cases a month. As of 2003, she had to her credit over 7,000 cases that she has successfully cracked.

Rajani single-handedly runs this private detective agency, and has women in her staff as well. The staffers are paid based on the number of cases they solve. Every staff member is provided with a mobile phone so they can keep in touch with her and give her minute-by-minute updates regarding the case on which they are working. In a 1998 interview, she said her firm had handled "domestic problems, company espionage, missing people and murders" throughout India and abroad, sometimes in disguise. "I've played a maidservant, a blind woman, pregnant woman, dumb woman – fear is not a word in my dictionary", she remarked. Talking about her sensational cases so far, Rajani says: "A 45-year-old woman had given supari to kill her son as she had an extra marital affair and her son objected to it. She planned to eliminate him. It was also reported that she was behind the mysterious killing of her husband. I was given the task to find out who her lover was. I worked as a servant in her home for six months. One day, I saw him and recorded their conversation, but I couldn't get chance to inform my clients. But after a week, when the killer came at night, I got a chance and informed her relatives. They came and arrested the accused." In another case, she acted like a lunatic at Juhu beach to listen to what two executives of a multi-national company were talking about. The company had given her the job of finding out if the two men were involved in a financial scam. The job was done successfully and she gained a few multi-national companies as her permanent clients. Daily, she meets with different clients at her office located at Shivaji Park. She has helped the Mumbai police in the past though she mostly deals with family affairs.

Rajani is single. She says: "I love my profession and if I get married, then I will be divided between family and profession. Therefore, I do not want to get married as I want to help society and investigate the hidden aspects in a person's life." Based on her experiences, she has written two books: “Faces Behind Faces” and “Mayajal”. The former has won two awards, while the later has won six awards. In addition to honours for her books, she is also a recipient of the Hirkani award from Doordarshan that honours women achievers. She is the subject of a documentary film made by Dinkar Rao, titled Lady James Bond.


Source: Wikipedia and Google search.

Neerja Bhanot

#8/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Tomorrow a biopic will be releasing on Neerja Bhanot, a courageous purser on board the hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 who was murdered while saving passengers from terrorists on 5 September 1986. Posthumously, she became the youngest recipient of India's highest peacetime military award for bravery, the Ashok Chakra, also the first female to receive this award. With the film around the corner and the publicity campaign at full flow, a lot is being written and shared about Neerja on the social media. So, there was a natural curiosity to find out about her.

Neerja Bhanot was born in Chandigarh on 7th September 1962, the third child of Rama Bhanot and Harish Bhanot, a Mumbai-based journalist. Her parents already had two sons and were very happy to have a daughter. She is described to have been a very sensitive, deeply affectionate and extremely decent child in her growing up years who believed in sharing with her people all her joys but not the jolts.

Neerja suffered the first set-back early in her life when she had an arranged marriage in March 1985 and joined her husband in the Gulf. The marriage was a harrowing experience which lasted but two months. Before the marriage, it was made clear that it would be a dowry less marriage. But when she reached the "ordained home" she was told that even a "very poor man gives something to his daughter in marriage". She was starved off finance and food in a foreign land and she lost five kg of weight in just two months. She had to borrow money from the husband even to make a telephone call. She had been modelling even before marriage and had come back to Mumbai to honour a modelling contract. An ugly letter followed, listing terms for her return, which she believed that no person with self-respect could accept. The letter listed a straight formula: accept the humiliating terms without a whimper and return at your own cost or "we will separate". The worst was that the letter asked her as to what was she? "You are just a graduate". The gutsy Neerja could not pocket this and she decided to stay back with her parents, which in 1985 was a big step shrouded in social stigma. Instead she applied for a flight attendant's job with Pam Am. There were nearly 10,000 applications but Neerja found place among the top 80. In fact, the Pan Am job was a great success from day one. She went to Miami for training as a flight attendant but she returned home as a Purser (the cabin manager or the chief flight attendant).

Neerja was the senior flight purser on the ill-fated Pan Am Flight 73 flying from Mumbai to USA, which was hijacked by four armed men on 5th September 1986 at Karachi airport in Pakistan. The aircraft was carrying 361 passengers and 19 crew members. The terrorist wanted to fly to Israel and wanted to crash the plane against a building. After the terrorists boarded the plane disguised as airport security personnel, they advanced to take charge of the aircraft, Neerja, who happened to be the first one to become aware of the hijack, dashed to inform the captain in the cockpit. A terrorist, however, caught her by her handy ponytail but she was able to shout the "hijack code". Another flight attendant who got her code conveyed it to the cockpit. As the plane was on the tarmac, the three-member American cockpit crew of pilot, co-pilot and the flight engineer evacuated the aircraft through an overhead hatch in the cockpit per their training so that the aircraft could not be forcibly flown. Neerja, being the most senior cabin crew member remaining aboard, took charge. Her training had taught her to follow up the hijacking warning with 6 steps. In the Karachi situation, she was required to "communicate" with the hijackers. Her smiles, even in deep distress, won a response. She looked after the passengers, within permissible limits. Her smiles were taken as an assurance by the passengers and crew members that the worst was over. The hijackers were part of the terrorist Abu Nidal Organization and were backed by Libya. The terrorists then instructed her to collect the passports of all the passengers so that they could identify the Americans. The terrorists wanted to put pressure on America by identifying and threatening the Americans on the aircraft. Neerja and the other attendants under her charge hid the passports of the 41 Americans on board; some under a seat and the rest down a rubbish chute so that the hijackers could not differentiate between American and Non-American citizens. The power generator was running out of fuel and voltage was falling. Then "something" happened. Neerja was standing close to the leader of the terrorists. The light had become very dim. Suddenly, guns began vomiting fire within the aircraft. Neerja jumped to the emergency exit and threw it open, where a chute flung and she assisted all the passengers escape. According to Dr. Kishore Murthy, his wife Dr. Veena Bharthi, Mrs. Malti Krishnaswamy and other eyewitnesses, Neerja was absolutely calm and efficient through the horrific episode. She and another flight attendant were helping the passengers out of the exit door when one of the terrorists started targeting them. There was constant firing of rounds. The auxiliary power unit had failed and the terrorists feared a commando attack. Hence, they started firing indiscriminately. The terrorist who spotted Neerja helping passengers out caught her and shot her point blank. In the dead body, there were bullets in her abdomen, on the shoulder near the neck and in the arm. Not only had she assured the failure of the hijacking by preventing the plane from getting off the ground, she also saved the lives of hostages in those long hours of incarceration. This incident happened just two days before her twenty-fourth birthday.

Neerja was recognized internationally as "the heroine of the hijack". In 2004 the Indian Postal Service released a stamp commemorating her. With insurance money and an equal contribution from Pan Am for using the brand Pan Am in the title, her parents set up the Neerja Bhanot Pan Am Trust. The trust presents two awards every year, one for a flight crew member, worldwide, who acts beyond the call of duty and another, the Neerja Bhanot Award, to an Indian woman who, when faced with social injustice such as dowry or desertion perseveres and then helps other women in similar social distress. The award includes a sum of INR 1,50,000, a trophy and a citation. Neerja's brother Aneesh went to Washington DC in 2005 to receive the 'Justice for Crimes Award' awarded posthumously to her as part of the 'Annual Crime Rights Week' at a ceremony held at the United States Attorney's office for the District of Columbia. In 2006, she and the other Pan Am Flight 73 flight attendants and Pan Am's flight director for Pakistan were awarded the Special Courage award by the United States Department of Justice. A square called Neerja Bhanot Chowk is named after her in Mumbai's Ghatkopar (East) suburb by the Mumbai Municipal Corporation, which was inaugurated by Amitabh Bachchan. The civil aviation ministry of India conferred an honour on Neerja Bhanot posthumously on 18th February 2010 in New Delhi on the occasion of the launch of the celebrations of the centenary of Indian aviation.


Source: Wikipedia, Google search and the website on Neerja (http://neerjabhanot.org/)

Ursula Burns

#7/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Ursula M. Burns currently serves as Chairman (since May 2010) and CEO (since July 2009) of Xerox. She made headlines in 2009 when she became the first African-American woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company. She is also the first woman to succeed another woman as head of a Fortune 500 company, having succeeded Anne Mulcahy as CEO of Xerox.

Ursula was born on September 20, 1958 and was raised by a single mother in the Baruch Houses, a New York city housing project. Both of her parents were Panamanian immigrants. She attended Cathedral High School, a Catholic all-girls school on East 56th Street in New York.

According to Ursula, her mother is her greatest inspiration and she was her strength during her growing up years in the rough and tumble public housing projects on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Many people told her that she had three strikes against her: She was black. She was a girl. And she was poor. Her mother though didn’t see it that way. She constantly reminded her that where she was didn’t define who she was. She knew that education was her daughter’s way up and out. On a modest salary, her mother somehow managed to send Ursula to good Catholic schools. Back then Ursula was prepared for one of three career options: nun, teacher, or nurse. None of those paths felt quite right to her and she began dreaming of becoming an engineer. Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute offered her a spot in the freshman class and she panicked—a classic case of being careful of what one wishes for. She thought she didn’t have the right preparation for it. The school was in a different borough of New York City that seemed foreign and distant to her. She feared the students would surely be smarter than her. However, the courage and confidence that her mother and Cathedral High School had given her enabled her to go for it. It wasn’t easy. It would have been so simple to let go of her dreams and set out on a more predictable journey. Besides, she had a lot of catch-up courses to master. She was an oddity in a sea of predominantly white males. She doubted herself big time. She even started out in chemical engineering but later switched to mechanical engineering, which she enjoyed more. And, ever so slowly, she regained her footing. She went on to obtain a bachelor of science degree in Mechanical Engineering from New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering in 1980 and a master of science in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University a year later.

In 1980, she first worked for Xerox as a summer intern, permanently joining a year later, in 1981, after completing her master's degree. In January 1990, her career took an unexpected turn when Wayland Hicks, then a senior executive, offered her a job as his executive assistant. She accepted and worked for him for roughly nine months when she was ready to go back home because she was about to be married to Lloyd Bean. In June 1991, she became executive assistant to then chairman and chief executive Paul Allaire. In 1999, she was named vice president for global manufacturing. In 2000, she was named a senior vice president and began working closely with soon to be CEO Anne Mulcahy, in what both women have described as a true partnership. Nine years later, in July 2009, she was named CEO, succeeding Mulcahy, who remained as Chairman until May 2010. Thereafter Ursula Burns was also designated as the Chairman. During her tenure, she has helped the company transform from a global leader in document technology to the world’s most diversified business services company serving enterprises and governments of all sizes. Shortly after being named CEO in 2009, she spearheaded the largest acquisition in Xerox history, the $6.4 billion purchase of Affiliated Computer Services. Today, Xerox is the leader in diversified business process services with its Services business representing over 50 percent of the company’s total revenue. Its Document Technology business remains the market share leader in the industry and continues to grow in key areas including graphic communications.

In addition to the Xerox board, she is a board director of the American Express Corporation Exxon Mobil Corporation and Datto Inc. She also provides leadership counsel to community, educational and non-profit organizations including FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), National Academy Foundation, MIT, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, among others. She is a founding board director of Change the Equation, which focuses on improving the U.S.'s education system in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). In March 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama appointed her vice chair of the President's Export Council. She regularly appears on Fortune’s and Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful women.

She has been married to Lloyd Bean for over 25 years, whom she met while working at Xerox. A scientist and researcher, he was also 20 years her senior. She has a daughter Melissa (born c. 1992) and a stepson Malcolm (born c. 1989) who attended MIT. She likes to spend most of her time with organizations that help minorities and women gain the education and self-respect they need to take risks and to dream big.


Source: Wikipedia and Google search.

Kalpana Chawla

#6/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Today is Kalpana Chawla’s death anniversary, who happens to be the one India-born woman who gave millions of other girls the courage to dare to dream of becoming an astronaut. She was an Indian-American astronaut and the first Indian woman in space. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. In 2003, she was one of the seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. She often went by the nickname K.C. Her story is not of ‘rags-to-riches’ or of ‘poor-family-girl-overcoming-obstacles’ but it still is one of the most inspiring stories of ‘daring-to-dream’ and ‘working-hard-to-fulfil-your-dreams’. It definitely is a story of grit and determination and I am sure it inspires many women around the world just as much as it inspires me.

She was born in Karnal, Haryana, India. Her interest in flight was inspired by J. R. D. Tata, India's first pilot. She studied aeronautical engineering at the Punjab Engineering College in 1982 where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree. Thereafter she moved to the United States to obtain a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from University of Texas (1984). Dr. Chawla earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering from University of Colorado in 1988. That same year she began working for NASA's Ames Research Center. Kalpana Chawla became a naturalized USA citizen, and married Jean-Pierre Harrison, a freelance flying instructor. She held a certified flight instructor's license with airplane and glider ratings, and has commercial pilot's licenses for single and multiengine land and seaplanes. She also enjoyed flying, hiking, back-packing, and reading. On a personal level, she was a strict vegetarian . On her mission, she carried a white silk banner as part of a worldwide campaign to honor teachers, as well as nearly two dozen CDs, including ones by Abida Parveen, Yehudi Menuhin, Ravi Shankar, and Deep Purple.

Dr. Chawla entered NASA's astronaut program in 1994 and was selected for flight in 1996. Her first mission to space began on November 19, 1997 as part of the 6 astronaut crew that flew the Space Shuttle Columbia Flight STS-87. She was the first Indian-born woman in space, as well as the first Indian-American in space. (She was the second person from India to fly into space, after cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma who went into space in 1984 in a Soviet spacecraft.)

On her first mission, she travelled over 6.5 million miles in 252 orbits of the earth, logging more than 375 hours in space. During STS-87, she was responsible for deploying the Spartan Satellite which malfunctioned forcing two other astronauts to go on a spacewalk to capture the solar satellite. A five-month NASA investigation blamed the error on the flight crew and ground control. She was fully exonerated (although this did not stop some reporters from making direspectful comments about her involvement in the mishap in the days after her death in the explosion of the final Columbia mission). After being selected for a second flight, she lived at the Lyndon B Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas , undergoing extensive training. Her mission got delayed in July 2002 when NASA engineers identified three cracks on the shuttle's second engine's liquid hydrogen flow liner. Over six months later the shuttle was cleared and she returned to space in the ill-fated STS-107 mission. On the morning of Feb. 1, 2003, the space shuttle returned to Earth, intending to land at Kennedy Space Center. At launch, a briefcase-sized piece of insulation had broken off and damaged the thermal protection system of the shuttle's wing, the shield that protects it from heat during re-entry. As the shuttle passed through the atmosphere, hot gas streaming into the wing caused it to break up. The unstable craft rolled and bucked, pitching the astronauts about. Less than a minute passed before the ship depressurized, killing the crew. The shuttle broke up over Texas and Louisiana before plunging into the ground. The accident was the second major disaster for the space shuttle program, following the 1986 explosion of the shuttle Challenger. Over the course of her two missions, Chawla logged 30 days, 14 hours, and 54 minutes in space. After her first launch, she said, "When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system."

Shortly after her last mission, India renamed its first weather satellite 'Kalpana-1' in her honour. She was also posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. In fact, an Asteroid, namely 51826 Kalpanachawla, is one of seven named after the Columbia's crew. There are many awards, scholarships, streets, university halls, etc. named after her. She died a hero and a role-model for many young women, particularly those in her hometown of Karnal where she periodically returned to encourage young girls to follow in her footsteps.


Source: Wikipedia and Google search.