Google honours Sarla Thukral, India's 1st woman pilot who flew at 21 in sari

New Delhi: Google on Sunday marked the 107th birth anniversary of Sarla Thukral, the first Indian woman to pilot an aircraft, with a doodle.

Google said they wanted to do a doodle for Thukral last year but its plans were withheld after the tragic plane crash that occurred in Kerala.

“We planned to run this same Doodle honoring Sarla Thukral in India last year. However, when the tragic plane crash occurred in Kerala, we withheld the Doodle out of respect to the event and relief effort. Though we don’t usually run Doodles more than once, Thukral left such a lasting legacy for women in aviation that we decided to run the Doodle this year in honor of her 107th birthday,” the Google Doodle page for the day reads.

Thukral was born in 1914 in Delhi and later moved to Lahore. Inspired by her husband who was an airmail pilot from a family of fliers, Thukral began her own training and obtained an initial license.

It is said she stepped into a cockpit of a small-double-winged plane for her first solo flight while being dressed in a traditional saree.

"Lifting the craft into the sky, she made history in the process. Newspapers soon spread the word that the skies were no longer the province for only men," the Google Doodle page writes.

She then persevered and obtained her A license, a first for Indian women, by completing one thousand hours of flying in the aircraft owned by the Lahore Flying Club.

After that, she began her preparations to become a commercial pilot. But the outbreak of World War II put a halt on her civil aviation training.

At that point, Thukral started studying fine arts and painting at Lahore’s Mayo School of Arts (now the National College of Arts).

Later in her career, she returned to Delhi and continued her painting, and managed to have a successful career in clothing and jewelry designing.