Neelam Katara

#39/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

With her battle to get her son’s killers to justice reaching finality before the Supreme Court, Neelam Katara (now about 64 years old) was very recently in the limelight again, as usual decrying honour killings and musclemen-led politics. Neelam feels that losing her son and the the long legal battle has left deep wounds. Her health, family life and finances took a back seat while she fought to get her son’s killers punished. She also joked about whether she would need to ask for more security in the light of the judgment and the sharp remarks she has made against “corrupt” politicians. Her 14-year long fight for justice to prove her son's death was an "honour killing" is well known. A lone woman's fight against a political family with a strong criminal background can make anyone quiver to their knees. "I stayed strong. I wanted to fight for my son who always stood up for others," she said. But in the end, with the recent Supreme Court ruling, she feels that she can now rest in peace and have a normal life again.

Neelam’s son, Nitish Katara, was 23 when he was abducted and murdered by the three convicts as they were opposed to his relationship with Bharti, the sister of convict Vikas Yadav and daughter of Uttar Pradesh politician D P Yadav. The Katara family too was skeptical about the match, but never thought the affair would end like this. They didn’t approve of the relationship but Nitish was sure he wanted to marry Bharti. So, they were trying to respect his decision and all the time wondering and hoping that the affair would end in a while. They never imagined they would lose their son in the wake. The family also had very little time to consider the issue as Nitish informed his parents about his relationship in December 2001. He was killed two months later, in February 2002.

On the fateful night of 16th February 2002, Nitish attended a friends wedding in Ghaziabad along with Bharti. Bharti's mother, her brother Vikas and sister Bhavna were also all there. After the wedding, four people have told the court that they had seen Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal Yadav take Nitish into their Tata Safari SUV. His friends thought he would be returning soon, but when they had not returned till well past midnight, Bharat Divakar, who had accompanied Nitish to the wedding in a taxi, went to their house. It was 3 am when Neelam Katara opened the door, and she immediately called Bharti. It turned out that Bharti herself was trying to find out Nitish's whereabouts. She asked Neelam "to go to the police, adding that maybe her brothers – Vikas and Vishal – had taken Nitish to Punjab". Bharti is thought to have called her sister Bhavna Yadav, whose registered mobile phone number was used all night to call many friends of the couple, as well as Neelam Katara. Bharti also gave Neelam her father's number, and after a fruitless visit to the police, at 8 in the morning, Neelam called D. P. Yadav, who did not know where Vikas or Nitish might be. Next morning, the police found a battered and burned body at Khurja, 80 km from the wedding venue. The body had been so badly beaten that "the digestive system had fallen out". At 11 am in the morning, Neelam Katara filed a First Information Report. Based on initial statements by her and Bharti Yadav, warrants were issued for Vikas and Vishal. “The moment I saw that burnt body, I knew it was him. The policemen told me that they couldn’t bear that sight for long but I stood there and kept looking at Nitish’s battered and charred remains. That’s when I decided, I cannot let him die like this. He deserved justice and I would go to any extreme,” she recalls. In her FIR, on the basis of the conversations she had with Nitish's friends while searching for his whereabouts, Neelam set down her deep suspicions that Vikas and Vishal Yadav, Bharti's brothers, who had disapproved of her relationship with Nitish, were involved in the crime. Subsequently, she filed a habeas corpus at the advice of senior Supreme Court woman lawyer, Kamini Jaiswal, who has been her pro-bono legal adviser ever since. What proceeded was years of legal battle, court proceedings, convictions, bails and appeals.

Neelam says, “Had Bharti's brothers not killed Nitish, they would have killed Bharti in the name of caste and honour. ‘Honour killings’ have been a common occurrence. They happen every week in little towns of states like UP, where I was born and brought up.” In fact, Neelam is really unhappy at caste becoming such a major source of divisions in contemporary India. Nitish himself was brought up never to make distinctions based on caste. For the Kataras “caste was purely a phenomenon of medieval times”. “When I came to know about Nitish and Bharti, the only thing I was wary about was that her brother, Vikas, was one of the accused in the Jessica Lal murder case. We did not even know of her father's criminal political background,” she recalls.

An English honours graduate and a pass out from Loreto Convent in Lucknow, Neelam says this courage was ingrained in her by the school. “My teachers had always encouraged us to ask questions. That is what gave me the courage to take on powerful men and defeat them in their own turf. It sure was a perilous journey, but I had to embark upon it. There was no other choice left for me. My husband was dying of a motor neurological disorder and my youngest son was still pursuing his graduation. I had to fight to save our reputation and get justice for my Nitish,” she says. Since then it has been almost 3,000 court visits and rounds of the legal offices to understand where the case was headed. It took her a few years to just come to terms with the legal procedures. But giving up was never an option.

A teacher and education adviser with the Kendriya Vidyala Board at that time, Neelam says teaching was always her first love and she was never interested in climbing the ladder and becoming the principal. She retired as the education officer and is now working with the British Council for the English language assessment arm. “I took a break after the incident, because I couldn’t handle all the running around with the job at hand. At present, I am with the British Council. It keeps me busy. I have to go three days a week and work from home a bit. The going is good,” she says. Although Neelam's father was a police officer with the Uttar Pradesh (UP) police, her maternal grandfather a judge and her paternal grandfather a public prosecutor she, like most ordinary Indians, had no awareness of the way the legal system worked. "In school we are taught science and general knowledge. But no one gives us basic legal knowledge or even legal rights awareness. I think having this information in today's crime ridden times will be a great asset," she states.

Her first visit to the court in Ghaziabad was an eye opener for her. Like most people, Neelam’s knowledge of courts was limited to what she had seen in the movies. Till she landed up in one herself. There were hundreds of men in black robes intimidating people around them. They were abusive, crass and looked like goons to her. The push and shove continued for a few hours before she even made it to the hearing. This slowly became a routine. When her husband died in August 2003, that was the only time that Neelam wanted to give up and take a back seat. “I was slightly de-motivated. We had not expected Nishit to leave like this. He was suffering but he was agile. The stress was a little too much for him. My husband has always been an organised man. He was the plan A, plan B kind of a guy. If we were out on a holiday, he was the sort to reserve two hotels — what if we don’t like the first arrangement? The Nitish case shocked him,” Neelam recalls. A few days after she had decided to let go of the case and simply resign to her fate, politician DP Yadav, the father of the accused, was disowned by his party in just four days after the media raised a hue and cry. “That was my green signal from God. I was not waging this battle on my own,” she says.

In November 2002, when the trials began, things had looked bad. Witness after witness turned hostile. Under immense family pressure, even Bharti denied any involvement with Nitish and left for the UK. The financial drain was severe when in January 2004 the public prosecutor ditched her and she had to hire a private lawyer. This led her to spend most of her husband's retirement benefits. Stress had taken a toll on Neelam. It led her to put on a lot of weight in the first eight years of her battle, which resulted in her developing blood pressure related problems. She then started taking care of herself with medication and regulated her weight. By her side today were her 80-year-old parents in Muzaffarnagar, UP, who she visited for a week every month. But support or no support, Neelam soldiered on.

For a jovial person who had little idea about police stations and court proceedings, Neelam says she took everything as a learning opportunity. “I have had a very protected childhood. But this murder changed me forever. At first, I blindly followed what the Government appointed prosecutor was saying. But I reaslied he was not going to stay much longer. Then another prosecutor came but the moment he dropped Bharti Yadav as a key witness from his list, I knew he was not fighting for us. I had to hire someone and I am glad we took the decision early. When Kamini Jaiswal, the Supreme Court lawyer and my advisor told me to first fight for the case to be shifted to Delhi, I didn’t see where she was going. I had no idea that it would be such a huge step in ensuring justice for my son. Many people congratulated me saying that this was half the battle won!,” she recalls.

Despite the personal loss and the odds stacked against her, Neelam remained a picture of composure all through the battle. She conducted herself with dignity, ignoring grave provocation from the defence side, which launched many personal attacks on her. Though despair and frustration, the gritty mother made sure she was present at all court proceedings. Several times, whenever the prosecution got adverse rulings, she nudged them to move the High Court and even the Supreme Court. Her first victory came on August 23, 2002 when the Supreme Court transferred the trial from a court in Ghaziabad to Delhi on her petition that the powerful accused were influencing the trial. Her role in forcing the prosecution to bring Bharti Yadav from UK to India to depose after she had evaded the court for three years, was critical in the manner the case turned out. However, the biggest disappointment in this battle for her also turned out to be Bharti’s attitude who, she felt let Nitish down big time. “She was in touch with me for the initial three weeks after Nitish was murdered and wrote a lot of confidential emails. But when she finally appeared in the court to give her account she backtracked without battling an eyelid. My son would have never done that. I felt disappointed that Nitish chose her,” she lets her heart out, but maintains her poise throughout.

After the trial court in 2008 convicted Vikas and Vishal Yadav as well as Sukhdev Pehlwan in the murder, legal loopholes created fresh problems for Katara. Requests for parole for the three convicts before the Delhi High Court led to the revelation, via RTI, that the Yadavs had been going in and out of prison for “hospital visits” and “court dates” which stretched far beyond what the rules allow. “There is no implementation of the laws, that’s why the rich and influential people are not scared. Am I supposed to spend my life filing RTIs about whether they are out on parole again?” she says. On the recent Supreme Court order, she says, “This is a milestone judgment.” She hopes that the punishment would “act as deterrent to others” who consider honour killing. “Life imprisonment is a misnomer. In 14 years’ imprisonment, criminals get out of jail even earlier on remission and keep coming out on parole. This judgment of 25 years without remission will be a deterrent,” she says.

Has anything changed for the better in all these years? “Emotionally, I have learnt to move on and be strong around my family. Physically, I have had some problems but they are under control now and socially, I have become more proactive and sensitive to issues concerning women. But when it comes to our legal system, I feel we are still much behind times. There is no witness protection programme in place as yet. There is no counselling for the victim’s family either. The criminal is counselled in the jail but what about the victim’s family? It’s as if it is our fault that our son got murdered,” Katara, who braved many indirect threats when the case was at its peak, says. “I would get weird calls from strangers telling me that they had tried to fight against the Yadavs but all they got in return was more pain and suffering. Sometimes, there were threat notes stuck on their gate and blank calls became a common occurrence. This did not deter me at all. It only told me that I am on the right path,” she says, breaking into a smile. 

“People have said I neglected my younger son because of this case. He now works and lives abroad and never got married. Someone once said it was because of the case and because I didn’t have time for him,” she says. Her youngest son, Nitin who was studying in Pune during the incident is now working for Interpol and is well-settled in this contractual job in the US. “Nitin very much wanted to be a part of the proceedings. He couldn’t believe that his mother would single-handedly manage everything. But I had made up my mind to keep him as far as possible from this matter. The moment he wrapped up his graduation from MIT Pune, I sent him to Leeds for his management degree. The money we got from Nitish’s life insurance was put to good use,” a proud mother tells you. She once said, “Nitin often asks me why all of this had to happen to him. To which I answer, ‘Some people have a perfect youth and a difficult old age like I had, and some have it tough like you in their youth. May be you have a lovely phase hereafter.’” It’s not as if Nitin did not contribute towards this situation at all. He stood as a pillar of support all through the tough times and even now ensures that his mother is occupied. “I visit him often and am happy with the way he has dealt with the entire thing. Nitin has paced his life well,” she says, confiding secretly that she may have not been able to devote a lot of time towards Nitin in his important years but as long as he understands, it’s all well.

Neelam’s inspiring persona has won her many admirers, at work and otherwise. In fact, very often as a member of the Kendriya Vidyalaya Board’s interview panel, she encounters young teachers, who are more delighted to meet her than to be called in for a promotion interview. She advises young people not to get cynical, speak up against injustice and never give up: “You have to be willing to make sacrifices and fight your own case. The rest are just waiting for you to give up.” “Murder for love doesn’t happen. Honour killing can’t be justified in any society. The battle is not over. I will stop only that day when there is a strict law against honour killing,” the crusader for justice, says. Neelam now plans to work towards getting a law against honour killing. She also wants to work spread awareness on Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - the disease that took her husband's life. There's no doubt, with her steely determination, she will achieve this as well. “I am not a very ritualistic person. However, whenever I have been completely down and out, something shows me the way ahead. ...Maybe that’s God.” That's Neelam Katara for you, a picture of rare courage and quiet optimism. 

Source: Google Search

Jean Batten

#38/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Google threw an interesting doodle today – Jean Batten’s 107th birthday, it said. Now I was curious, who Jean Batten was. The search made for an interesting read.

Jane Gardner Batten (named "Jane" at birth, her name soon morphed into "Jean") was a New Zealand aviator; born on 15th September 1909 to Frederick Batten, a dental surgeon, and Ellen Batten (who would become her strong supporter in her choice of a piloting career). She had two older brothers.

She was the manifestation of triumph and hope against the odds through the dark days of the Depression. In 1934, she smashed, by six days, Amy Johnson’s flight time between England and Australia. The following year, she was the first woman to make the return flight. In 1936, she made the first ever direct flight between England and New Zealand and then the fastest ever trans-Tasman flight. Jean Batten was the ‘Garbo of the Skies’. She stood for adventure, daring, exploration and glamour. In her time, Jean Batten was one of the most famous people in the world. Jean was born in Rotorua, New Zealand in 1909. A few weeks before her birth, the French pilot Bleriothad become the first man to fly across the English Channel, and Jean’s mother, Ellen, cut out a related newspaper article and pinned it to the wall beside the newborn’s cot. It is difficult to imagine what Ellen had in mind. She was a proto-feminist, an extrovert and a staunch admirer of the suffragettes. Whether Ellen’s ambitions for Jean with the clipping were specific or symbolic, it turned out her daughter was to follow Bleriot to the skies. The clipping was but a sign of things to come. Throughout Jean’s life her mother was to be her single greatest influence. The two were incredibly close. As Jean grew older she developed a mercenary attitude towards men, which was perhaps gleaned from Ellen, whose pride had been hurt by an unfaithful husband. Ellen was a strong, independent woman struggling to assert roles for herself beyond wife and mother.

The family moved from Rotorua to Auckland when Jean was four. Jean’s school and teenage years were a strange and turbulent time. Although she went to a private school and the family were never on the bread line, money was always an issue. This was possibly the effect of World War 1 and later the personal politicking between the warring parents. Since Jean’s birth, the family had been demarcated along gender lines: Ellen, with Jean, against husband Fred and Jean’s brothers. Jean went to the ‘Ladies College’ in Remuera; the boys went to a State school. When the parents finally split in 1920, Ellen took Jean; to her, the boys were Fred’s concern.

Ellen was free-spirited and ambitious, with an aggressive determination that might, in later times, have been described as ‘feminist’. These notions were amplified after her separation from Fred. She instilled in the young Jean the idea, radical for its time, that to succeed in the world she must compete with men in male pursuits. At that time flying was the most daring, dangerous and exciting activity on earth: modern, largely untested and spectacular. It was the most male of male pursuits. Jean’s interest in flying grew. Fred and Jean went to hear Australian ace Charles Kingsford Smith speak at a celebratory dinner in Auckland in 1928, after his flight across the Pacific. Here, she announced to her astounded father and the bemused Australian flying ace (who had stopped to chat to the pretty teenager) “I’m going to learn to fly.”

Jean’s interest became part of the fight between her warring parents. As Mackersey notes, “[Fred] regarded the whole notion [of Jean flying] as preposterous, ‘It’s far too dangerous,’ he said, recalling the many flying accidents he had witnessed on the Western Front,” and implying that such pursuits should be left to the blokes. But Jean had other ideas. On a visit to Australia in 1929, she persuaded Ellen to seek out Kingsford Smith to take her for a flight in the Southern Cross. Ellen agreed, doing everything in her power to support the teenager’s flying aspirations.

In 1930, Jean and Ellen left Auckland for London. The move was ostensibly to further Jean’s musical education (she was a gifted pianist) but London was also the centre of the aviation world. Shortly after her arrival in England Jean joined the London Aeroplane Club and started taking lessons at the Stag Lane aerodrome – gaining her ‘A’ (private) license in December 1931. By this time aviation was past its infancy and women flyers were not unusual. Jean said later that she took to flying ‘like a penguin takes to water’. Other flying pupils at the time remember her differently: ambitious and determined, but a slow learner and terrible at landings. Throughout her apprenticeship, her publicly stated main focus was to be the first person to fly between England and New Zealand. To those around her this notion was patently ridiculous, but she was undeterred. She applied herself assiduously and, after a brief return to New Zealand, gained her commercial license in mid-1931.

Jean was resolute in her determination to complete the flight from England to New Zealand, and to achieve more than ‘just’ this. As Ian Mackersey says, she “had an almost messianic faith in herself, and an unshakeable conviction that she had a significant role to play in putting New Zealand womankind on the map”. With this self-belief and sense of purpose came the notion that it was the duty of others to fund her flights. Despite the later embroided self-depiction of her state of affairs, her own resources were meagre: The post-ware depression hit her father’s Auckland dental practice hard and his allowances to her had dwindled to nothing. She had sold her piano and long since spent the proceeds. But she still managed to fund her way into the sky. Jean was physically attractive and was aware of her allure. On several occasions, besotted men gave her large sums of money for her missions – in the case of Kiwi RAF pilot Fred Truman, his entire life savings. Many were under the impression Jean would marry them. She never married. Jean’s flying skills improved on a parallel with her powers of persuasion. In 1932, she was virtually gifted a second-hand Gipsy Moth bi-plane by the elegant, public-school educated and infatuated Victor Doree, who borrowed the purchase price from his wealthy linen-merchant family. Such patronage was to set Jean on the way to achieving all her aspirations for fame and success.

Jean had won her commercial license, but was not interested in merely making flying her job. She wanted to break records. She wanted to be the object of adulation. In 1933, she left England to fly to Australia. English aviatrix, Amy Johnson, had made it in 20 days, three years earlier and Jean had to break that record. She wanted to make it in 14 days. It didn’t happen on the first attempt, engine failure in India bringing the mission to an untimely end. This was the first time Jean had flown away from England and the first time she had flown over the sea or the desert, which were no small feats in the tiny, flimsy bi-plane. But for Jean Batten it was failure and a pot-hole on the road to destiny. Her second attempt ended even closer to England. She ran out of petrol over Italy and had to make a dangerous emergency landing between Rome and Marseilles. With the plane slightly damaged in the landing she was grounded in Italy for a week, thus destroying any chance of breaking Amy Johnson’s record. She returned to England. Jean took off again on May 8th 1934: destination Australia. Battling the elements, she reached Darwin in 14 days and 22 hours, not quite a day longer than her stated goal but smashing Amy Johnson’s time by five days. She even flew back to England from Australia, the first woman to make the return flight. She gave talks and attended receptions in her honour. She was employed to give talks accompanying an RAF recruitment film – an unprecedented move, as at that time such employment was a bastion of male privelege.

Thanks to earnings from her two successful flights – proceeds of her overflowing lecture/cinema tours, fees from Gaumont British and the Express, and a major endorsement deal with Castrol (advertisements with Jean’s image began to appear with the slogan “If there were a better oil than Wakefield Castrol I would use it”) – Jean was able to upgrade the Gipsy Moth. With the help of a generous cheque of £1000 from Lord Wakefield after her Australia flight, she bought a Percival Gull monoplane. With its lightweight metal propeller, hydraulic brakes (the Moth had no brakes), an automatic petrol pump, landing flaps, a 200 hp engine and an extra fuel tank, the Gull was the machine Jean would break new records in.

Now very much the object of public fascination in England, Australia and New Zealand, Jean was preparing for another long-distance flight; this time across the South Atlantic between West Africa and Brazil. The record time for the route, 85 hours and 20 minutes, was held by Scotsman, Jim Mollison. Jean took off from France for Casablanca on November 11, 1935, landing at her destination nine and a half hours later – an unintentional record. Then on to Thies in Senegal, from where she would leave for South America. Freak storms over the Equator made the Gull’s instruments go haywire and, with the compass out of action, Jean was convinced she was off course. It was only when the weather cleared and she saw cargo vessels on shipping routes that she knew she was heading in the right direction. She made Port Natal, Brazil, in 61 hours and 15 minutes, almost a day faster than Mollison.

The receptions she had been honoured with in Australia and New Zealand were repeated in South America, taking the levels of hero worship to new heights. In Brazil she was awarded the Order of the Southern Cross, an honour never before given to a member of the British Empire who was not of royal birth. She was made an honorary member of the air force in three countries and ‘the dashing and fearless aviator’ was rushed by crowds of well-wishers everywhere she went. She was, by now, one of the most famous aviatrixes in the world and the public waited anxiously for the announcement of her next feat. They were not to be disappointed. It was a flight from England to Auckland: across the world to the edge of the Empire. She took off on the 5th of October 1936. It was 3.30am when, bathed in autumn moonlight she walked out to her aeroplane, but there was already an enormous crowd of reporters, newsreel cameramen, photographers and fans gathered to see her off. As she crossed the English Channel, the frightening enormity of the flight dawned on her: 14,000 miles, including 1300 miles over the treacherous Tasman.

The Percival Gull performed brilliantly. She made Australia in six days, which was less than half the time it had taken in the Gipsy Moth three years earlier, setting a new solo record. Her second touchdown in Sydney rivalled her first as adoring crowds came out en masse. Not content to merely fly across the world, Jean made sure she was always glamorous, so fostering and encouraging the popular perception of her as ‘the Garbo of the Skies’. She always brought evening dresses with her for receptions and would emerge from the cockpit after long flights wearing makeup and dressed in a white flying suit.

Although Australia wanted her to stay, she was determined to cross the Tasman. In the days leading up to her departure she had been criticised in a newspaper editorial for undertaking the flight because of the time and money it would cost to rescue her if she crashed. She replied with a short statement designed, through gallantry and sacrifice, to override the pettiness of the original criticism: “If I go down in the sea no one must fly out and look for me. I have chosen to make this flight, and I am confident I can make it, but I have no wish to imperil the lives of others or cause trouble or expense to my country.” She took off at 4.40 am, October 16, 1936. The flight took 10 and a half hours, during which time thousands on both sides of the Tasman held their breath, waiting between regular news updates of her flight. She said later that she almost “lost her nerve” flying across the Tasman. Encountering terrible weather, she was convinced she was off course. She did not see land until she was almost over it, and before she reached the Taranaki coast she had practically given up hope, despite her instruments telling her she was still on course. News of Jean’s touchdown at Auckland airport caused 13 miles of traffic jams as New Zealanders welcomed home their adventurous daughter. Returning to her birth place of Rotorua, she was once again guest of honour of local Maori, as she had been after the 1934 journey. She was gifted a chief’s feather cloak and given the title Hine-o-te-Rangi – “Daughter of the Skies”.

After several months rest in New Zealand and Australia, she flew back to England. She made the trip in five days and 18 hours; she now held the world record in both directions. Yet she had decided that this would be her last long distance flight. She was happy with her achievements, and the flying world also recognised what she had achieved. In 1938, she was awarded the medal of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, aviation’s highest honour, being the first woman to receive it. 

World War Two ended her flying adventures. Her Gull was commissioned to active service but Batten was not permitted to fly it. During the war she was involved in campaigns giving lectures in England to raise money for guns and aeroplanes, but her flying days were over. After the war she retired from public life except for a few anniversary appearances. There is some mystery as to why she was never accepted into the Air Transport Auxiliary. Possibly it was due to double vision incurred in an earlier crash, or perhaps because she wasn’t a team player. Whatever it was, the war signalled the end of Jean’s long distance flying adventures, and the end of Jean in the public eye. After the war she lived in Jamaica and then Spain. She continued to live with Ellen until her mother’s death in 1965, the devotion of both women growing stronger with the years. 

Jean Batten’s last visit to New Zealand was in 1977 where she was guest of honour at the opening of the Aviation Pioneers Pavilion at Auckland’s Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland. It would be the last time many heard of her. After the visit she returned to Spain, living a quiet, reclusive existence; but the influence of Ellen would stay with her the rest of her life. Because of her reclusiveness in later life, it was over a year before those who had kept up some form of correspondence with Jean, on not hearing from her, began to worry. It was 1983. In 1982 she had been bitten by a dog on the island of Majorca. She refused treatment and the wound became infected. She died alone in a hotel on Majorca, from complications from the dog bite, and was buried on 22nd January 1983. She was buried under her middle name, Gardner, in a pauper's grave in Majorca in 1983 - she'd only been there for a week and they didn't know who she was - and it wasn't discovered until five years later. Thus the world, and her relatives, did not learn of her passing until September 1987 when at the instigation of Batten’s London publisher, Bob Pooley, some cursory investigations were advanced by the New Zealand Government. These inquiries and those of her remaining family were slowed by a real concern not to invade Batten’s private world, and they proved fruitless. Despite some media speculation about her whereabouts, it would take four and half years and the tireless detective work of documentary film-makers Ian and Caroline Mackersey, to uncover the mystery and bureaucratic obfuscation that hid Batten’s lonely death. It was an tragic demise that could only serve to further the Batten legend. A plaque now rests on the wall above the ignominious paupers’ grave where she is buried. The Times (London) paid tribute to her fame and daring in a major obituary, and Auckland International Airport bears her name.

Not only her beauty and stellar celebrity, but also her eccentric and withdrawn habits had come to mirror her cinematic counterpart, Greta Garbo. She became known as the "Greta Garbo of the skies". In October 2008 a musical “Garbo of the Skies” written by Paul Andersen-Gardiner and Rebekah Hornblow had its inaugural performance in Opunake by the Opunake Players at the Lakeside Playhouse. It was based on Ian Mackersey's biography.

Jean Batten took New Zealand from the edge – “A magnificent woman and her flying machine.” – With determination and skill she took on the elements in a dynamic and unexplored new technology, in the process making the world seem smaller, and linking New Zealand with that world in a more tangible way than ever before. She captured the imagination of an age and her feats of daring broke barriers of distance, time and gender.

Source: NZedge.com, Wikipedia and basic Google search

Dipa Karmakar

#37/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Dipa Karmakar is an artistic gymnast who represented India at the 2016 Summer Olympics. She is the first Indian female gymnast ever to compete in the Olympics, and the first Indian gymnast to do so in 52 years. She attained 4th position in Women's Vault Gymnastics event of Rio Olympics 2016 with an overall score of 15.066. She first gained attention when she won a bronze medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, becoming the first Indian female gymnast to do so in the history of the Games. She is being supported by the GoSports Foundation under the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. She also won a bronze medal at the Asian Gymnastics Championships and finished fifth at the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, both firsts for her country. For her wonderful performance in Rio Olympics 2016, the government of India conferred upon her the Khel Ratna Award in August 2016.

Dipa was born on 9th August 1993 to a Bengali family hailing from Agartala in Tripura. She started practicing gymnastics when she was 6 years old and has been coached by Soma Nandi & Bisweshwar Nandi since then. When she began gymnastics, she had flat feet, an undesirable physical trait in a gymnast because it affects their performance. Through extensive training, she was able to develop an arch in her foot. In 2008, she won the Junior Nationals in Jalpaiguri. Since 2007, Dipa has won 77 medals, including 67 gold, in state, national and international championships. She was part of the Indian gymnastics contingent at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where Ashish Kumar won India's first-ever Commonwealth Games gymnastics medal. 

Dipa competed in the 2011 National Games of India, representing Tripura. She won gold medals in the all-around and all four events: floor, vault, balance beam and uneven bars. At the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Dipa won a bronze medal in the women's vault final, thanks largely to her Produnova vault, which has a difficulty value of 7.00. She received an average two-vault score of 14.366. She was the first Indian woman to win a Commonwealth Games gymnastics medal, and the second Indian overall, after Ashish Kumar. At the 2014 Asian Games, Karmakar finished fourth in the vault final with a score of 14.200, behind Hong Un-jong, Oksana Chusovitina, and Phan Thị Hà Thanh. After the competition, she said, "See, the two top girls here are the gold and silver medalists in the Olympics, while the third girl was bronze winner at the World Championships. So I'm more than happy that I gave them a good fight and finished fourth here." At the Asian Championships, held in Hiroshima from July 31–August 2, Dipa won the bronze in women's vault while finishing 8th on balance beam. In October 2015, she became the first Indian gymnast to qualify for a final stage at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. She scored 14.900 on vault in the qualification round to secure her place for the finals, where she finished 5th with a two-vault average of 14.683. 

On 10th August 2016 at the 2016 Olympic Test Event, Dipa Karmakar became the first female gymnast from India to qualify for the final vault event at the Olympics, with a score of 14.833. She narrowly missed out in the bronze medal, finishing 4th in the finals of the event with a score of 15.066 on 14 August 2016 at the Gymnastics Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where Simone Biles won Gold.

Dipa is only the fifth woman in gymnastics history to land the Produnova vault, or the handspring double front. The Produnova* is an artistic gymnastics vault consisting of a front handspring onto the vaulting horse and two front somersaults off. The vault currently has a 7.0 D-score, and is the hardest vault performed in women's artistic gymnastics. This vault also known as the “Vault of death”, and not without a reason. A BBC News package begins with Dipa’s chilling statement: “One wrong move and I could die on the spot.” Nobody has ever died doing the Produnova but it’s not a far-fetched exaggeration. The possibility of a serious injury is real if the gymnast does not land properly on her feet or if the twists go horribly wrong. In the latter scenario, you could land on your head, your back or in some other awkward position. A poorly executed move left the Soviet Union gymnast Elena Mukhina a quadriplegic in the 1970s. So, why did Dipa chose it? An upbringing in a family of limited economic means puts you far, far away from an Olympic medal in gymnastics. If you are distanced from the margins of elite sport, you don’t get anywhere without taking risks imbued with the greatest dangers. The structural limitations are far too big to be surmounted by two front somersaults. This is why Dipa kept going even when an injured ankle threatened to hold her back at the Commonwealth and Asian Games two years ago. Her path to participation at the Olympics demanded a battle with pain that distorts the ideal sport seems to promote. The public perception is that sport is good for us. It keeps us healthy. Tell that to someone doing the “vault of death”. When asked whether she would ever attempt the Produnova, the current-day darling of gymnastics Simone Biles told The New Yorker, “I’m not trying to die.” Many other gymnasts view the move with similar apprehension. No wonder then that it is rated so highly. However, the level of difficulty involved in carrying it out means that judges may score gymnasts attempting it leniently. In fact, there have been suggestions that the Produnova is set to be marked down severely soon in order to discourage gymnasts. The considerable risk has meant that there have been many detractors. But, still there are some gymnasts, like Dipa, who try this risky vault as it guarantees them seven points because of the difficulty level and even faulty execution gives them a shot at a medal. Nevertheless, the inherent risks in Dipa’s daring skill move, of course, hold little fears for her. Such is the level of her mastery, and which we were fortunate to sample in Rio. She told the Wall Street Journal, “Now it’s the easiest vault for me. I hope this vault becomes more famous than me in India. The vault is very dangerous. I say, ‘Thank you, I like risk.’ ”

Dipa now will train for 2020 Tokya Olympics. And since it is rest period for Dipa, she and her coach are found here every evening, carefully examining the many future gymnasts in the making.

Source: Wikipedia and Google search.

*P.S. As a trivia on the sidelines of the above article, the Produnova is named after Yelena Produnova, also known as Elena, a former competitive gymnast from Russia, whose senior international career lasted from 1995 to 2000, and earned her multiple world and Olympic medals except gold which somehow always eluded her. She is known for her innovative and powerful skills on the vault and floor exercise and is one of the few gymnasts to have skills on all four events named after her:

Apparatus	Name	Description	Difficulty
Vault	Produnova	Handspring double front salto	7.0
Uneven bars	Produnova	Uprise/clear hip to handstand, half turn to L or mixed L grip	C
Balance beam	Produnova	Jump forward with 1/2 twist to back pike salto	E
Floor exercise	Produnova	Split leap with a full turn to land in a split	C

Source: Wikipedia

Melody McCloskey

#36/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

In San Francisco, Melody McCloskey stands out as a rare woman in the land of tech start-ups. She has raised some $14 million in venture capital for StyleSeat, an online booking platform for salon professionals that she founded in 2011 along with Dan Levine, a developer. Today, some 260,000 stylists in the US use the platform, and the company employs 31 people.

But Melody’s career in tech was nearly derailed in 2002, back when she was a high school student in suburban San Francisco and she took an advanced placement course in computer science, something of an introduction to coding. “I have always loved computers and I’ve always loved tech,” she said. “I was really excited about it.” Melody, who studied ballet until growing too tall, brought a dancer’s discipline to her studies. “The coursework wasn’t harder than any of my other A.P. courses,” she said. “But I was the only woman in the class.” And right away, she said, “there was all this tension and attention present because of that. All the guys either wanted to talk to me or didn’t want me to be there.”

As an adult, she might have been able to handle that, but as a high school student, she said, “it added extra pressure that I didn’t feel in any of my other classes.” Ultimately, she decided to drop the course — and tech all together, at least for a while. She majored in international relations and French at the University of California, Davis, where she said a counsellor advised her to pursue public relations: “You’re a girl — you have great social skills.” Melody did try public relations after graduating but didn’t like it. Then, she took a job managing online content for Current, the now-defunct television channel. “I was helping to build all the back-end C.M.S.” — the content management system — “like really nerdy stuff,” she said. “It was really fun.”

As is common in the San Francisco Bay Area, she began hanging out with start-up founders and other people in tech. “A lot of my friends were talking about raising money, building minimum viable products and how to get the best engineering talent,” she said, which made her think about starting a business. After a series of disappointing haircuts, she came up with the idea for StyleSeat, a platform where consumers can search for stylists, read reviews and book appointments, something of a Yelp-meets-OpenTable for hair salons and spas. She came up with the idea for StyleSeat more from the consumer’s perspective. She is not from the beauty industry and she didn’t know a lot about the industry either. StyleSeat is a platform for stylists, aestheticians, makeup artists, nail artists to run their entire business. It gives them a website with online booking; it also manage all their client relationships; and it also gives them a mobile app so they can run everything from their phone.

Melody then found a developer to write a program and roped in a friend to design the site. Once she had a prototype, Melody contacted a former colleague and software engineer, Dan Levine. “I said, ‘I’d love for you to be my co-founder. This is the vision. What do you think?’ And he said yes. And I was like, ‘Okay, but you’re gonna have to quit your job, and actually I can’t pay you. I have no money, and we’ll probably have to bootstrap.’ And he said yes. And I was like, ‘Well, maybe you should think about it a little bit. Like we might need some investment from you to get this going.’ And he’s like. ‘Yes. I already said yes.’”

Melody and Dan started StyleSeat in 2010. They worked in the time-honoured tech start-up way – Seven days a week — with no pay. They ended up bootstrapping for the first year and a half of the business. And that certainly wasn’t because they didn’t want to raise money. It was because raising money was a huge challenge for them. The vast majority of investors are male. And so they were not much interested in the ideas of a woman who comes in with this app that’s not just really focused on female entrepreneurs but also caters to primarily the needs of women. And so much feedback initially was that women do not really want this or need this since they are not much tech savvy. Most also believed that the stylists and salon owners were not going to use technology. 

One early backer was Garrett Camp, a friend and the chairman of ride-sharing service Uber, who invested $10,000. To get stylists to use the service, she invited them to parties, where she offered free Champagne and showed PowerPoint presentations on how to use StyleSeat. Finally, after Melody and Dan pitched StyleSeat at Tech Crunch Disrupt, they raised $700,000 from investors, including Ashton Kutcher. They hired a team, built out the platform and attracted users. The user base tripled in a year, she said, attracting other high-profile investors like Sophia Bush and Guy Oseary. Since its launch, StyleSeat has recorded more than $500 million in bookings, and it now operates in 15,000 cities in the US. Melody and Dan have raised another $14 million to keep growing the site.

Thinking back to high school, Melody said she regretted dropping out of computer science, but she’s glad the experience didn’t stop her from pursuing a career in tech. Not many women can say the same. A number of research studies have found that college-bound women interested in science, technology, math and engineering — the STEM subjects — often encounter bias from faculty members and either choose or are steered into other fields, such as arts and the humanities. Women hold less than 25 percent of all STEM jobs, according to Commerce Department data. Still, some schools are creating programs to attract women to tech and since then, it has seen a substantial increase in female computer science graduates.

Melody said she would have kept up her studies if there had been more support, like a “Women Joining Computer Science Club” at school. Young girls face a discouragement that is far more subtle than “take away the calculator and give them a Barbie,” she said. Rather, “it’s more the ecosystem not being particularly favourable to girls,” she said. “No one turned to me and said, ‘You can be a software engineer.’”

Melody now mentors and helps young and “unlikely” entrepreneurs bypass common startup mistakes and accelerate quickly. Her personal story, of experiencing discouragement and failure in her initial computer science studies, to achieving her vision of becoming a successful tech entrepreneur, is truly inspiring.

Source: NY Times blogs and storyexchange.org

Dr. Neena Gupta

#35/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Call it a geek streak, but Neena would rather spend her evening solving math problems. It is unadulterated passion for the subject that has made this Indian National Science Academy topper who she is today. Dr. Neena Gupta, an Indian math prodigy has proved that sky is the limit for some. After Shakuntala Devi, she has filled the void that was left opened and has made an outstanding achievement in the field of mathematics.

Last year, Neena Gupta of Kolkata became a recipient of the prestigious Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Medal for Young Scientists for solving a math problem, which astonishingly enough, remained open for almost 70 years! The math problem that no one but Neena could solve in decades is called the Zariski Cancellation Conjecture. INSA described her solution as, “one of the best works in Algebraic Geometry in recent years done anywhere.” In addition to the INSA award, she was also awarded the Ramanujan Prize (2014), and the Saraswathi Cowsik Medal (2013) by Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Alumni Association.

But Neena is still looking for ‘solutions’. There's so much yet to be learned and explored — and she is absorbed in commutative algebra at the moment. Since what she does is academia driven, she spends her time equally between teaching and research. At the moment she is a full time faculty member at INSA (where, incidentally, she also studied), a visiting faculty member at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, and a visiting scientist at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. She credits her dad and husband for where she is today. “Most girls in our community get married right after graduation. But, my dad let me get a PhD despite societal pressure. He never questioned my life choices — and my husband continues to extend the same support.”

But, this is not the end for Neena, who thinks that sky’s the limit as she continues to learn and explore further. At the moment, she has kept herself drowned in commutative algebra. She is a living example for those who are against educating girls. We need to understand that by educating a girl we can eliminate the root cause for many problems, such as poverty, population.

Source: Google Search

J.K. Rowling

#34/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

This post is about 2 days late. I would have loved to publish this on 31st July, J.K. Rowling’s birthday (also Harry Potter’s birthday) but there is just so much written material on the internet that coming out with a brief and crisp summary itself took time. However, I doubt I succeeded quite.

Joanne "Jo" Rowling, pen names J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, and known simply as "Jo" among friends and family, is a British novelist, screenwriter and film producer best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. The books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold more than 400 million copies. They have become the best-selling book series in history and been the basis for a series of films which is the second highest-grossing film series in history. Rowling had overall approval on the scripts and maintained creative control by serving as a producer on the final instalment.

Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), a science technician, on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her parents had first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore. As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories which she frequently read to her sister. Aged nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother worked in the science department. When she was a young teenager, her great-aunt gave her a copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling read all of her books. Rowling has said that her teenage years were unhappy. Her home life was complicated by her mother's illness and a strained relationship with her father, with whom she is not on speaking terms. 

In 1982, Rowling took the entrance exams for Oxford University but was not accepted and read for a B.A. in French and Classics at the University of Exeter. After a year of study in Paris, Rowling graduated from Exeter in 1986 and moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. In 1988, Rowling wrote a short essay about her time studying Classics entitled "What was the Name of that Nymph Again? or Greek and Roman Studies Recalled"; it was published by the University of Exeter's journal Pegasus. After working at Amnesty International in London, Rowling and her then boyfriend decided to move to Manchester, where she worked at the Chamber of Commerce. In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind. When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately. In December, Rowling's mother Anne died after ten years suffering from multiple sclerosis. Rowling was writing Harry Potter at the time and had never told her mother about it. Her death heavily affected Rowling's writing, and she channeled her own feelings of loss by writing about Harry's own feelings of loss in greater detail in the first book.

Rowling moved to Porto to teach. In 1993, she returned to the UK accompanied by her daughter and three completed chapters of Harry Potter after her marriage had deteriorated. An advert in The Guardian led Rowling to move to Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language. She taught at night and began writing in the day while listening to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. After 18 months in Porto, she met Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in a bar and found they shared an interest in Jane Austen. They married on 16 October 1992 and their child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford), was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal.[25] Rowling had previously suffered a miscarriage. The couple separated on 17 November 1993. Biographers have suggested that Rowling suffered domestic abuse during her marriage, although the full extent is unknown. In December 1993, Rowling and her then-infant daughter moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to be near Rowling's sister.

Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling saw herself as a failure. Her marriage had failed, and she was jobless with a dependent child, but she described her failure as liberating and allowing her to focus on writing. During this period, Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression and contemplated suicide. Her illness inspired the characters known as Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book. Rowling signed up for welfare benefits, describing her economic status as being "poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless." Rowling was left in despair after her estranged husband arrived in Scotland, seeking both her and her daughter. She obtained an Order of Restraint, and Arantes returned to Portugal, with Rowling filing for divorce in August 1994. She began a teacher training course in August 1995 at the Moray House School of Education, at Edinburgh University, after completing her first novel while living on State benefits. She wrote in many cafés, especially Nicolson's Café (owned by her brother-in-law, Roger Moore), and the Elephant House, wherever she could get Jessica to fall asleep.

In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter. Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evens, a reader who had been asked to review the book's first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher. The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript. A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London. The decision to publish Rowling's book owes much to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury's chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father and immediately demanded the next. Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children's books. Soon after, in 1997, Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing. In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 1,000 copies, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000. Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the British Book Award for Children's Book of the Year, and later, the Children's Book Award. In early 1998, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for US$105,000. Rowling said that she "nearly died" when she heard the news. In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher's Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Rowling moved from her flat with the money from the Scholastic sale, into 19 Hazelbank Terrace in Edinburgh.

Its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July 1998 and again Rowling won the Smarties Prize. In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running. She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children's Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the UK and the US on 8 July 2000 and broke sales records in both countries. 372,775 copies of the book were sold in its first day in the UK, almost equalling the number Prisoner of Azkaban sold during its first year. In the US, the book sold three million copies in its first 48 hours, smashing all records. Rowling said that she had had a crisis while writing the novel and had to rewrite one chapter many times to fix a problem with the plot. Rowling was named Author of the Year in the 2000 British Book Awards. A wait of three years occurred between the release of Goblet of Fire and the fifth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released on 16 July 2005. It too broke all sales records, selling nine million copies in its first 24 hours of release. In 2006, Half-Blood Prince received the Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released on 21 July 2007 (0:01 BST) and broke its predecessor's record as the fastest-selling book of all time. It sold 11 million copies in the first day of release in the United Kingdom and United States.

The books also had film adaptations, becoming not just one of the highest grossing film series, but creating mammoth stars out of the starcast including Daniel Radcliff (portraying titular role of Harry Potter), Emma Watson (as Hermoine Granger) and Rupert Grint (as Ronald “Ron” Weasley). Warner Bros., who bought the rights to the books, took considerable notice of Rowling's desires and thoughts when drafting her contract. One of her principal stipulations was the films be shot in Britain with an all-British cast, which has been generally adhered to. Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, the victor in the race to tie in their products to the film series, donate US$18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental, as well as several community charity programs. The first four, sixth and seventh films were scripted by Steve Kloves; Rowling assisted him in the writing process, ensuring that his scripts did not contradict future books in the series. Rowling had gained some creative control on the films, reviewing all the scripts as well as acting as a producer on the final two-part instalment, Deathly Hallows. Rowling, producers David Heyman and David Barron, along with directors David Yates, Mike Newell and Alfonso Cuarón collected the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema at the 2011 British Academy Film Awards in honour of the Harry Potter film franchise. In September 2013, Warner Bros. announced an "expanded creative partnership" with Rowling, based on a planned series of films about Newt Scamander, author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The first film will be scripted by Rowling, marking her official debut as a screenwriter, and be set roughly 70 years before the events of the main series. In 2014, it was announced that the series would consist of three films. In October 2015, Rowling announced that a two part play she has co-authored with playwrights Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, was the 'eighth Harry Potter story' and that it would focus on the life of Harry's Potter's youngest son Albus after the epilogue of the Deathly Hallows. On 28 October 2015, the first round of tickets went on sale and sold out in several hours.

Harry Potter is now a global brand worth an estimated US$15 billion, and the last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history. The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages. And it also happens to be the highlight of Rowling’s "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on state benefits to multi-millionaire status within five years. In 2004, Forbes named Rowling as the first person to become a U.S.-dollar billionaire by writing books, the second-richest female entertainer and the 1,062nd richest person in the world. Rowling disputed the calculations and said she had “plenty of money”, but was not a billionaire. She is the United Kingdom's best-selling living author, with sales in excess of £238m. The 2016 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £600 million, ranking her as the joint 197th richest person in the UK. Time magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans. In October 2010, Rowling was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors. Rowling has received several awards for her works as well as honorary degrees from St Andrews University, the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, the University of Exeter, the University of Aberdeen and Harvard University, for whom she spoke at the 2008 commencement ceremony. After having been conferred with the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), for services to Children's literature in the year 2000, Rowling was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009.

In 2000, Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust, which uses its annual budget of £5.1 million to combat poverty and social inequality. The fund also gives to organisations that aid children, one parent families, and multiple sclerosis research. Rowling, once a single parent, is now president of the charity Gingerbread (originally One Parent Families), having become their first Ambassador in 2000. Rowling collaborated with Sarah Brown to write a book of children's stories to aid One Parent Families. In 2001, the UK anti-poverty fundraiser Comic Relief asked three best-selling British authors – cookery writer and TV presenter Delia Smith, Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding, and Rowling – to submit booklets related to their most famous works for publication. Rowling's two booklets, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, are ostensibly facsimiles of books found in the Hogwarts library. Since going on sale in March 2001, the books have raised £15.7 million for the fund. The £10.8 million they have raised outside the UK have been channelled into a newly created International Fund for Children and Young People in Crisis. In 2002 Rowling contributed a foreword to Magic, an anthology of fiction published by Bloomsbury Publishing, helping to raise money for the National Council for One Parent Families. In 2005, Rowling and MEP Emma Nicholson founded the Children's High Level Group (now Lumos). In January 2006, Rowling went to Bucharest to highlight the use of caged beds in mental institutions for children. To further support the CHLG, Rowling auctioned one of seven handwritten and illustrated copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a series of fairy tales referred to in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The book was purchased for £1.95 million by on-line bookseller Amazon.com on 13 December 2007, becoming the most expensive modern book ever sold at auction. Rowling gave away the remaining six copies to those who have a close connection with the Harry Potter books. In 2008, Rowling agreed to publish the book with the proceeds going to Lumos. In November 2013, Rowling handed over all earnings from the sale of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, totalling nearly £19 million. 

Rowling has contributed money and support for research and treatment of multiple sclerosis, from which her mother suffered before her death in 1990. In 2006, Rowling contributed a substantial sum toward the creation of a new Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University, later named the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic. In 2010 she donated a further £10 million to the centre. In 2003, Rowling took part in a campaign to establish a national standard of care for MS sufferers. In April 2009, she announced that she was withdrawing her support for Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland, citing her inability to resolve an ongoing feud between the organisation's northern and southern branches that had sapped morale and led to several resignations.

In May 2008, bookseller Waterstones asked Rowling and 12 other writers (Sebastian Faulks, Doris Lessing, Lisa Appignanesi, Margaret Atwood, Lauren Child, Richard Ford, Neil Gaiman, Nick Hornby, Michael Rosen, Axel Scheffler, Tom Stoppard and Irvine Welsh) to compose a short piece of their own choosing on a single A5 card, which would then be sold at auction in aid of the charities Dyslexia Action and English PEN. Rowling's contribution was an 800-word Harry Potter prequel that concerns Harry's father, James Potter, and godfather, Sirius Black, and takes place three years before Harry was born. The cards were collated and sold for charity in book form in August 2008. On 1 and 2 August 2006, she read alongside Stephen King and John Irving at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Profits from the event were donated to the Haven Foundation, a charity that aids artists and performers left uninsurable and unable to work, and the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières. In May 2007, Rowling pledged a donation reported as over £250,000 to a reward fund started by the tabloid News of the World for the safe return of a young British girl, Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal. Rowling, along with Nelson Mandela, Al Gore, and Alan Greenspan, wrote an introduction to a collection of Gordon Brown's speeches, the proceeds of which were donated to the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory. After her exposure as the true author of The Cuckoo's Calling led a massive increase in sales, Rowling announced she would donate all her royalties to the Army Benevolent Fund, claiming she had always intended to, but never expected the book to be a bestseller. Rowling is a supporter of The Shannon Trust, which runs the Toe by Toe Reading Plan and the Shannon Reading Plan in prisons across Britain, helping and giving tutoring to prisoners who cannot read.

Several years after she wrote the final Harry Potter book, she continues to enthral young readers with the world of magic; just as she continues to inspire everyone to not take “No” as an answer, continue to strive for success and never give up on one’s dream.

Source: Wikipedia

NL Beno Zephine

#33/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

NL Beno Zephine is an Indian Diplomat, who is the first 100% visually challenged Indian Foreign Service Officer. Born on 17 April 1990 in Chennai, India to Luke Anthony Charles, an employee of Indian Railways and Mary Padmaja, a home maker, she did her schooling in Little Flower Convent Higher Secondary school for the blind in Chennai, obtained under graduation in English literature from Stella Maris College, Chennai, and further did her post graduation in Loyola College, Chennai.

At the age of 25 years, she created history by becoming the country’s first 100 percent visually challenged Indian Foreign Services (IFS) officer. She had cleared her exam in 2014 but she got her posting only on 12 June 2015. Ever since Zephine received the news from the government of securing the 343rd rank in the Civil Services Examination, she has been busy giving motivational speeches and addressing students across the state. Having gone through all the difficulties and finally emerging as a winner, Zephine advises other people with disabilities to never give up on their dreams and utilise the resources available to them. A post-graduate in English from Madras University, Beno worked as a probationary worker at State Bank of India. But one phone call from the Ministry of External Affairs, who called to confirm her selection in IFS, changed her life forever. A socially active person from childhood, Beno always gave a piece of her mind to those who would leave the taps on and waste water. Her friends and family would call her a “collector” because of her quality to stand for what she believed in.

Visually impaired since birth, Zephine never let her disability come in her way of achieving her dreams. Moreover, an extremely supportive family, friends and teachers made her reach the place where she is today. As there is not enough study material available in Braille, her family and friends read for long hours to help her prepare for her exams. While her father fulfilled her desire of getting any book she required, her mother helped her extensively in the reading process. She also used Job Access With Speech (JAWS), a software that allows the visually challenged to read from a computer screen. The software can be used on a smartphone too. An active student throughout, Zephine participated in various debate and extempore competitions in school and is looking forward to now speaking as a diplomat.

"It is vitally important to discard disability from the mind," she said. Kudos to the girl who has proved that nothing can beat strong determination and hard work. 

Source: Google search