Like Mother, Like Son: A 'Bad Attitude' and a Bold Mother Helped Make IAF Pilot Abhinandan Varthaman
A woman toughened by serving in war-ravaged countries, Dr Shobha has also been an activist for healthcare and education. More recently, she launched an online campaign to increase punishment for child sexual abuse convicts two years ago.
Chennai:
A bad attitude. That is what Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman said in an
eight-year-old video when asked what it takes to make a good fighting pilot.
A
brave mother too, should perhaps be added to that list of attributes, going by
the accounts of those who know the pilot’s family well.
Retired
Group Captain Tarun K Singha, who has known the family for decades, said that
the image of a calm, composed Abhinandan that many saw after his capture by the
Pakistani Army just shows the genes that Abhinandan inherited from his mother,
Dr Shobha Varthaman, who has worked in many conflict zones all through her
career as a doctor with Medicine Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders).
“She
epitomises the quintessential woman of substance. She has served humanity
amidst cataclysmic violence, healed the wounded in some of the worst conflict
zones around the world, ensured mothers and their newborn survive post-delivery
complications in Haiti,” Gp Capt Singha told News18 about Dr Shobha.
He
emailed Dr Shobha to offer solidarity, but did not expect an answer in these
stressful times.
Abhinandan
Varthaman’ s father Retd Air
Marshal Simhakutty Varthaman,
“But
she replied with such composure within 15 minutes, even so late in the night.
It just shows her character, her mental strength and tenacity,” Singha says
about the mother of this braveheart soldier who found himself in enemy
territory on Wednesday.
Abhinandan Varthaman’ s father and mother
A
woman toughened by serving in war-ravaged countries, Dr Shobha has also been an
activist for healthcare and education. More recently, she launched an online
campaign to increase punishment for child sexual abuse convicts two years ago.
Abhinandan Varthaman’ s wife,Tanvi Marwaha, was Squadron Leader in the Indian Air Force for 15 years
“She
was very bold from her childhood days. Both father and mother are bold, but she
in particular, perhaps because she has faced tough times. She and her siblings
grew up losing their father early,” said her cousin C Kundanadhan.
What
Singha writes in an earlier article about her, however, is something that gives
a closer look at the dangerous places her work at Doctors Without Borders took
her to.
“In
the northern terriroty of Ivory Coast in 2005, only AK-47s and machetes ruled.
She went into rebel country, 300 km from the peace-keeping corridor of the UN,”
Singha recounted in the article, the extract of which he shared with News18.
Liberia
and Nigeria, post-civil wars in both places, were other places she was deployed
in, “amidst perennial conflicts between the villages and the oil companies,
government and the villages, oil thefts, intra and inter-tribal fights.”
She
has encountered life-threatening experiences during the second Gulf War, in
Iraq, where she was the only anaesthesiologist serving at the time. “For
security reasons, those outside the blast area were radioed to remain indoors.
But since I was the only anaesthesiologist, somehow or the other, they thought
utilising me for work is more important than security. Even the surgeons were
inside their hotels,” she told Singha about her experience.
She
has seen the worst of the Iran-Iraq stand-off, and later served in Papua New
Guinea in 2009 where she treated tribals who were injured with arrow heads and
primitive weapons.
Her
mercy mission in Haiti, after more than 300,000 people died in an earthquake,
saw her running an orthopaedic hospital, a paediatric hospital in one of the
most dangerous areas wrought by crime groups, Dr Singha recounts.—News18
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