While Indian women were fighting for basic civil rights in the 1930s, Sarla Thukral was earning her pilot’s license and logging a thousand flying hours. This aviation pioneer proved that social barriers can be broken at three thousand meters up in the air.
The Girl from an Aviator Family
Born in 1914, Sarla married at age sixteen to P.D. Sharma, the first Indian to hold a postal pilot’s license. Her husband’s family boasted nine pilots—a true phenomenon in colonial India. It was her husband who encouraged her to begin training at the Lahore Flying Club.
In 1936, at only twenty-one years old, she piloted a Gypsy Moth biplane on her own and obtained an A-category license.
To earn it, she had to log over a thousand hours of flight. Notably, at that time—even across Europe—female pilots were rare, despite society being far more liberal there.
When the Skies Closed
The year 1939 brought double tragedy. Sarla’s husband died in a plane crash, while the outbreak of World War II suspended all civilian flight training. As a young widow with a child to care for, she faced a harsh choice between her dreams and responsibility.
Rather than despair, she enrolled at the Mayo School of Art in Lahore, studying painting in the tradition of the Bengal School. This decision became pivotal for the rest of her life. The diploma opened completely new career opportunities for her.
The partition of India in 1947 forced her to relocate to Delhi. A supporter of the Arya Samaj, a reformist branch of Hinduism, she later remarried R.P. Thakral. Before that, she raised two daughters on her own, tackling the typical hardships of an internal refugee.
From Pilot to Businesswoman
In Delhi, Sarla combined her artistic education with entrepreneurial flair. She established a textile printing company, which quickly became a commercial success. Her life’s motto was simple: always be happy, because an optimistic attitude helps you survive any crisis.
She died in 2008 at the age of ninety-one, remaining physically active to the end. Neighbors remembered her as the fittest person in the neighborhood.
Today, Indian airlines employ the world’s largest percentage of women pilots, and the road to the cockpit began with pioneers like her.
Rory Thornfield
Rory's grandfather left behind a wartime diary filled with accounts of a minor Burma skirmish that history books never mentioned. Reading it, Rory realized: behind every famous battle are dozens of forgotten struggles, each with its own human drama.
His preferred topics: The overlooked corners of military history – secondary campaigns, shadow battalions, local conflicts that never made headlines. From medieval sieges to twentieth-century expeditions, he focuses on the soldiers, not the generals. The people who faced impossible choices and carried those experiences forever.
Rory strips away the romanticism without losing respect for those who served. He combines tactical analysis with personal stories, examining human endurance and moral complexity rather than celebrating warfare. His writing is balanced, thoughtful, and deeply researched.
Outside work, Rory visits forgotten battlefields (now quiet farmland), photographs war memorials nobody tends anymore, and interviews veterans' families.